My rating of this book is probably proof that I'll forgive a novel just about anything if it sounds enough like a poem. This book was absolutely weird (it's also absolutely filthy and would be a great choice for anyone who wants to punk their book club). Was it good literature? Someone better than me will have to figure that out, because I couldn't tell. Who cares, it has passages like this:

"Fashion this prayer to Thee. I don't know to get it with 1000-voice choir effect like 'consider the lily.' Fashion this heap with gleaming snow-shovel facets, for I meant to build an altar. I meant to light a curious little highway shrine, but I drown in the ancient snake cistern. I meant to harness plastic butterflies with rubber-band motors and whisper: 'Consider the plastic butterfly': but I shiver under the shadow of the diving archaeopteryx."

And that was just a page I opened to at random. ( )

This book makes me so wistful. Pre-internet, pre-irony, just sucking a dude off in a rowboat. I couldn't stop reading! Wanders from the material to the mystical without ever losing its sense of humor, and despite all its excesses never loses its humanity. I felt the same way when I read "Les Enfants Terribles" when I was younger, like, here was this sexy book about kissing cousins, so decadent, so apolitical and unnecessary, so why did I like it so much? (Besides the obvious.) Because books like these play out like vivid fever dreams, written in ecstatic prose that recreates a kind of religious experience. There's so few things that can evoke that raw feeling, again with the DFW quotes, something something about sex, religion, fiction and music being the few places where loneliness can be transfigured & treated. So much psychedelic and experimental lit I just wanna throw in the junkbin but this book is like a sad-eyed thrift store Jesus, totally mesmerizing. Leonard Cohen can embody any moment and make it radiate outwards/inwards. This is the kind of book I wish I could write. ( )

I love Leonard Cohen's music, I adore his poetry BUT, this novel did nothing for me. It is too concerned with being clever and not sufficiently with creating character and story.

I need to play some of Cohen's music and read some of his poetry now to set the man back on his rightful plinth. ( )

I always knew that there had to be more to Cohen than a poetic ladies' man. This side of Cohen is only for those who want to know his darkest thoughts and have the guts to discover a man who's not afraid of boundaries. A brilliant novel, where even the most horrible things a human can go through (abuse, solitude, the journey to insanity, and death) are presented in a beautiful way. ( )

the great Canadian Dirty Book! It was also a quite well crafted exploration of the heady delights of the first fully explored love affair. While i am told, it is very male oriented, it is still a good example of what "he" was thinking....perhaps there hasn't been a female novel of the same stature.....please advise.... ( )