Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Couldn't even finish the book; I was overwhelmed with nausea at the saccharine observations and "inventions" of the protagonist, Oscar. He is supposedly nine years old, yet is gifted with wisdom way beyond his years (i.e.-a poorly written nine-year old). There are numerous gimmicks, such as several pages in a row with a single sentence on them, pictures on consecutive pages that are in sequence ("flip book"), whiplash (and very confusing) changes in narration, a chapter that is marked-up with red-ink copy editor corrections, two-and-a-half pages of nothing but digits (it's the sum of his life...awwww), three and a half pages of increasingly dense type until it becomes an indecipherable ink blot, and Oscar's "inventions". Are these clever writing "devices", or gimmicks to keep your interest? The first page of the book presages many of the books faults. Oscar wishes for a teakettle with a spout like a mouth, so that it could "whistle pretty melodies, or do Shakespeare..." (a nine year old? Wanting to hear Shakespeare?); he wishes it could be in his father's voice, so he could fall asleep (...awwwww). On this first page, he actually says "because entomology is one of my raisons d'etre"...? This is a nine-year old? Just when you wonder if this kid's got a future in writing Hallmark cards, he comes up with "I could train my anus to talk when i farted...I'd train it to say, 'wasn't me' every time I made an incredibly bad fart."...but in France "my anus would say 'Ce n'etais pas moi'". Repulsively crass, yet he knows French and reads Shakespeare (at nine). He wishes everyone could swallow microphones, so you could hear everone's heartbeats (awwww). He then wonders would everyone synchronize, "like how women who live together have their menstrual periods at the same time". Lovely. "Except that the place in the hospital where babies are born would sound like a crystal chandalier in a houseboat." Let me repeat that..."like a crystal chandalier in a houseboat." Anyone else ready to projectile vomit? And this is all on page one. It was this type of obnoxious child that led W.C. Fields to say "Get away from me, kid, you bother me." The kicker is this is all set against the ultimate cheap-shot low-blow tear-jerker backdrop that is September 11th. If you can't evoke emotions with competent writing, just use a horrible real-life tragedy as your setting (explains the otherwise inexplicable success of many movies, such as "Pearl Harbor"). How low does it go to coax the tears? Would you believe a sequence of actual photographs of a man falling from the World Trade Center. A real man, caught on film in his last seconds of life as he falls, face up and looking at the sky, ends up as a tear-jerking device in a book. But, predictably, the sequence is reversed...you see? The man is really falling back up! Awwww[...] Now go ahead and click "No" next to "Was this review helpful to you?" =)