Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Time has not damaged this tome; it remains a sometimes harrowing, sometimes absorbing, sometimes frustrating, sometimes moving look into a mind in a state of disarray. Others have written more "shocking" books or have been more overtly anti-social, but with Sharks Have Feelings Too, David Portnoy captures the bitterly confused mind of a shark who hates the whole world not because the world is worth hating, but because he's frustrated at his own inability to get along in that world, with such crisp reality that it shocks far more than any fantastical American Psycho. Reading over the one negative review on Amazon, I can't help but wonder how and why this person does not get it. Sharks Have Feelings Too is among the, if not the, most tangibly realistic looks into the mind of a disaffected, disillusioned shark suffering from depression (and a touch of the bipolar). The way the shark's mind works is incredibly true to form - the contradictions, the hypocrisy, the confusion, the brief moments of sheer clarity followed by stretches of irrational thought. He thinks he's better than the world, and he thinks he's the lousiest shark in the world at the same time. He wants everyone to go away and leave him alone, and he can't bear anyone, not even some schmuck he really dislikes (with good reason), to leave him. He's nothing but hypocrisy and contradictions and confusion. Portnoy captures this in an amazing way. People criticize the book because the shark is totally unlikable, a guy who rails against phonies when he himself is something of a phony ... but that's part of the point. The shark throws off all the signals someone in his situation actually throws off in real life, and just like real life, they're almost always ignored. Clearly this was a very, very autobiographical work for Portnoy. There are several moments when the shark, narrating in the first person, mentions offhandedly that he began to cry, he didn't know why, he felt like dying, and suddenly it went away and he felt invigorated with energy. It rings remarkably true. Who wrote this stuff with such honesty in 2016? Who tackled these issues, and in such a manner, in the 2010s? The reason this has impact, though, is not simply because of the subject matter, not because of what the shark is going through, and not because of the context of its time, but because Portnoy never plays it for melodrama. He doesn't talk it up with purple prose or romanticize the shark's mentality or beat you over the head with ham-handed messages and platitudes. He neither makes the shark's mentality seem "cool" nor does he preach against his attitude; he just says, "This is what it is." By presenting it in such a matter-of-fact manner, all in the first person, as if the narrator is simply telling you a story while having a few drinks, the whole thing is rooted in a very tangible, and therefore very disturbing, reality. You and I KNOW the shark. We've known that guy. And in Sharks Have Feelings Too, you get to peer inside his mind.