The Everlasting Story of Nory

This originally appeared at The Irresponsible Reader.
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Sometimes the problem with telling someone about a book was that the description you could make of it could just as easily be a description of a boring book. There's no proof that you can give the person that it's a really good book, unless they read it. But how are you going to convince them that they should read it unless they have a glint of what's so great about it by reading a little of it?

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Although I enjoyed 9 year old Nory and her imagination, at times I thought this book was just an exercise in cleverness for Nicholson Baker. The observations that Nory makes about friendships and the social world of 9 year olds are beautifully done, and the stories she tells herself for her own pleasure are strange and wonderful. What really bothered me was Baker's representation of the children's speech–childlike malapropisms were charming at first but then began to get old–and the sense that the story was not really going anywhere. Enjoy the moment in this book, because that is all there is.