Spectacular Happiness

I bought this book because I remember the author as a customer in a small art-house video store I used to work in. He always came in with his family, and they all seemed to make the most thoughtful choices for their viewing experience. I knew of his other books, however I gave up the psychology book of the week club after grad school, and never could bring myself to read one of them regardless of my fascination with this family. I was delighted when I saw that he wrote a fiction, and bought it immediately, even though it has been years since then, and I have long since departed from that part of the country.I have to say, I began to cry upon reading the first passage of the book. In fact it took me several days to get past the first chapter due to the vividness of the emotion I was experiencing through this narrator. The love expressed for his son, and the reluctance to have to explain the events which follow in order to express it, are simply exquisite. This love, for his wife and his son, are what drive him to extrordinary means of expression. An adherence to the spirit of one's life and relationships requires strength, courage, and a perserverance rarely experienced in this world. They must be imagined. Though I like to believe this is what I saw, when I saw the doctor with the two boys and the dog, sometimes the wife, always the daughter, come to rent their weekly films.

Simply my favorite book of the summer/fall season. "Spectacular Happiness" is politically alert, and it's also exciting and touching-a great father-son story. The characters are well drawn, even the comic ones, like the psychotherapist who brings the other characters together. Really, a remarkable and original novel.

This book is a great read. As pro reviewers note, Kramer's narrative is well-peppered with all manner of layering, reference and discourse. No doubt, many will love the book just because of that stuff. For me, the pleasure was in the story. Good stories, especially new ones like this one, are hard to find. The mind-movies created in this novel are worth watching and chuckling over. Veterans of the sixties, like myself, immediately recognize where Kramer's protagonist, Chip Samuels is coming from. But, they will be be surprised and amused at where he ends up.

There is everything to like in this novel. First there is Kramer's love of words. Perhaps we should not be surprised that a Harvard grad who spent two years reading literature at Oxford before going on to medical school should use the language with mastery. If not surprised, then, we are delighted. Delighted by his sensitivity to word and nuance, by the way characters and plot lines from classic novels are woven in, and by meeting fragments from the work of favorite poets worked seamlessly into the text.Insight into time and place is marvelous, the beach-plum and cedar-shingled Cape of the fifties and the trophy homes of the New England shore in the new millenium.Any graying SUV owners plagued by the nagging suspicion that they may have been on to something real in their barefoot, bell-bottomed, anti-materialist salad days will find validation in Kramer's vision.Frustrated environmentalists who know that the ecosystem is dying around us while George W. fiddles, will find catharsis. Most of all, however, we recognize ourselves in the pages of Spectacular Happiness. Kramer has a knowing finger on the pulse of our celebrity-obsessed, posession-conscious, tummy-tucked culture in a novel for our times.