You Don’t Love Me Yet by Jonathan Lethem

Hello everyone! It’s been over a year since this blog has been updated. I thought I’d post something new since I actually finished one book this summer. The one book I got to read was You Don’t Love Me Yet by Jonathan Lethem, which I bought only because I loved the other Lethem books I got to read. As She Climbed Across the Table was one of the most bittersweet stories I’ve read (okay, it’s about a professor who’s in love with a girl who’s in love with a gaping void), and Motherless Brooklyn had great noir-inspired language.

But You Don’t Love Me Yet, frankly, was horrible. The book is about a girl, named Lucinda, who plays the bass guitar in an unnamed rock band in which her ex-boyfriend is the lead singer. During the day she works in a performance art project that her other ex-boyfriend set up, where she takes anonymous calls from people who complain about anything and everything. She falls in love with one of the regular callers (“the Complainer”), eventually meets him, and everything for her goes to hell after that.

Arguably, the most important thing about writing a story from one character’s eyes is that the reader must be able to like or at least identify with the character. My biggest problem with this book was that Lucinda was downright unlikeable. There was absolutely nothing in the way of characterization, except it seemed like she just had the propensity to be fickle and sleep around, which would be alright except it seemed like Lucinda had no reasons at all to do so. I’m guessing Lethem meant to paint her as a mysterious, flighty, lovely girl, but eventually Lucinda gets demystified and turns into a downright silly person.

Lethem also took on a rambling tone that wasn’t consistent in the least. Plus, the long passages about the band’s music were not well-executed at all, nor was the plot interesting. By the time I finished the book, I knew I just wanted to get it over with.

The only redeeming qualities of the book were the few phone-call musings of the Complainer before Lucinda gets to meet him, and the fact that the character of Matthew, the lead singer of the band, was still kept mysterious and a little dark by the time the book was finished. But it still wasn’t enough to justify the money that I spent on the book.

I suggest you stay away from this and find another Lethem book to read. Any of them, actually, would be miles better than this one.