{"id":2787,"date":"2017-03-18T23:04:56","date_gmt":"2017-03-18T17:34:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/fableandi.com\/?p=2787"},"modified":"2020-03-05T17:10:29","modified_gmt":"2020-03-05T11:40:29","slug":"mens-club-leonard-michaels","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thebooksatchel.com\/mens-club-leonard-michaels\/","title":{"rendered":"The Men’s Club by Leonard Michaels – When Men Talk"},"content":{"rendered":"
Seven men get together and talk. Yes, that\u2019s right. They talk for a whole night, slowly peeling off their masks and revealing their true selves.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\u201cWomen wanted to talk about anger, identity and politics\u201d<\/em> <\/p>\n The Men\u2019s club<\/em>\u00a0is set in 1970s in a suburban home in Berkeley, California. Seven men\u00a0 get together in a room that \u201cseemed an odd place for this business \u2013 all the plants, colours, artwork. It burst on every side with cries for attention, excitations, a maniacal fear of boredom<\/em>,\u201d to form a men\u2019s club. None of them know what the club is going to be about. The men in the circle are friends and strangers to some of the others in the circle. As the evening wears on, the men start talking.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Each man has nothing to tell at first. As our narrator says, \u201cTo be wretchedly truthful, any social possibility unrelated to wife, kids, house and work felt like adultery. Not criminal. Not legitimate<\/em>.\u201d One man claims he slept with six hundred women and has photographs of them. Another cannot get over one woman he met in the past. One talks about a woman he still looks for while going shopping and wonders if he will recognize her if he sees her in another outfit because he does not remember her face or know her name. One talks about his friendship with a girl which ultimately suffered from jealousy with his relationships with other girls and how he worked it out with her. One talks about how he confessed his infidelity to his wife and what he did to save the marriage. So on and so forth, as the men get intoxicated, they pour out their deep dark secrets.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n I loved the sarcasm in the book. The book says about women, \u201cDeprivation gives you something to fight for, it makes you morally superior, it makes you serious. What was left for men these days? They already had everything<\/em>.\u201d Here are thought provoking ones about marriage, \u201cA marriage bed has benefits. You fart in it and nobody is offended<\/em>.\u201d Or \u201cA marriage\u2026Any little thing makes you angry. I go to the\u00a0 grocery and forget\u00a0 to buy coffee. Sheila says there is something fundamentally wrong with my brain. She looks like she wishes I was dead<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n What I did not enjoy about the book is how it seemed to fall into a clich\u00e9 that men look for love elsewhere and they cannot stay loyal to a wife. This felt repetitive and I got a bit bored in those pages. <\/p>\n I would love to read a review about the book from a guy\u2019s perspective, whether the book is realistic or not. I enjoyed the dark humour and men\u2019s viewpoints on loyalty, marriage, love and friendship. The book is just 150 pages long and a quick read.<\/p>\n Title : The Men\u2019s Club <\/p>\n Much thanks to Daunt Books for a copy of the book. All opinions are my own.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Seven men get together and talk. Yes, that\u2019s right. They talk <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2789,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6307,16],"tags":[462],"thb-sponsors":[],"class_list":["post-2787","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-books","category-reviews","tag-book-review"],"yoast_head":"\n
\nThe first sentence sucked me into the story. What can men possibly want to talk about? The term \u2018talking\u2019 is often associated with females, both in a good and bad way.<\/p>\n
\nHowever, I loved the climax. I did not expect that one coming. And I like how the book ended. I laughed at the end and exclaimed to myself , \u201cMen!\u201d and that sure sums up how good the ending was.<\/p>\nFinal Verdict<\/h3>\n
\nAuthor : Leonard Michaels
\nPublisher : Daunt Books
\nPublished : 2016 (Originally in 1981)
\nLanguage : English
\nRating : 3\/5<\/p>\n