MacGregor Tells the World

I loved it! This novel is romantic, sexy, politically aware, philosophical, lyrical and sometimes laugh out loud funny. The hero is someone you'd like to have as a friend. I relished the scenes where Mac meets up with a local kid who is hungry for knowledge (they met when Mac was briefly working in the local library) People dont' talk about the weather in this book; they talk about what they care about, and McKenzie has real things to say, and say well. Enjoy. T

I LOVE this book. I found this book as rolling and rollicking as the hills of San Francisco, where it takes place. It's funny, witty, wise, surprising, and beautifully written. McKenzie has a highly developed sense of humor, a great satyrical sense, unusual and fresh characters, and a beautiful and bold writing style. After having written a fabulous first novel, she has more than delivered on the second -- fun, profound. Watch this author!

I really enjoyed this book start to finish. It wraps you up and carries you away. A page turner! MacGregor, our hero, is a poetic young man who lost his mother and never knew his father. He falls in love with a bewitching woman from a grand literary family from San Francisco. She is freaky and messed up and way out of his league. This book is a heartbreaker. Like so many great books it's serious and funny at the same time. Best novel this year.

Mac West makes you want to rack your brain and the dictionary for a weightier and more glorious word than tragicomic because his story is a tragedy (think Oedipus, think Romeo and Juliet), a comedy (divine in so many ways), a quest narrative (he seeks, simultaneously and nearly every waking second, his lost father, his dead mother, and true, abiding love), a coming of age tale (and he does, he grows up, but in a good way), a love letter to the city of San Francisco, and, above all, a romance of the very highest sort. It's also teeming with writing that is startlingly inventive, witty, audacious, and often just plain beautiful, but that also reveals the author's admirable sense of proportion when it comes to her own gifts (the prose never becomes a dog-and-pony show, although she must have been tempted!). Like Mac (whom I miss already), this book is a charmer and a heartbreaker, both.