Book #10: Bowl of Cherries

The book: Bowl of Cherries by Millard Kaufman

What is this book about: It's about a young man's journey from graduate school at age 14 to a remote corner of Iraq, where he's trying to find out what holds bricks of manure together. Probably from that sentence you can guess that this book is full of zany characters doing and saying zany things, and your guess is correct. Also, the book switches back and forth in time, with the narrator in an Iraqi prision, about to be impaled to death, to the story of the life that got him there in the first place.

Why did I read this book: I needed something to read and this book happened to be nearby.

What did I think of this book: This very easily could have been a book that I despised, and to be fair, the ending of it is a rip-off, almost as if the author decided that he'd written enough pages and it was time to go home. But what do you expect? The author is in his nineties. Anyways, I could have hated this book, because I do think it relies too much on manufactured zaniness and fanciful language, but as it was, I enjoyed it. I didn't think too hard about it, and as a result I got pretty carried away by the story and pretty charmed by some of the characters. I will add that for being a book written by a guy in his nineties, it had an awful lot of sex in it. My oh my, old man.

What was my favorite part of this book: There were some funny sentences that made me chuckle, but I don't have the book in front of me right now, so those sentences will be lost to history.

What did I learn from this book: Even 90-year-olds can write fairly decent novels.

What grade do I give this book: B-, except the ending, which rankled me and as a result receives a C-.