Man or Mango is my least favorite Ellmann novel. I have gotten through all of her novels aside from Doctors & Nurses and Ducks, Newburyport. This not to say that Man or Mango, a Lament, is not good. It is entertaining, like all of her work, though it lacks focus and subtlety in my opinion.

Ellmann, famously an expatriate, who looks down on America's excesses through the lenses of her biased characters. There were segments in this book of unfiltered feminist vituperation. She also takes occasional potshots at Britain, so I wonder if she really feels at home there. One would gather from her humorous tirades that she was perpetually uncomfortable. Her characters, which are all uniformly Vonnegut-level snide social commentary machines, sniping at Presidents and secret shoppers and innocent old ladies, never tire of criticizing the universe around them. This method is used to best effect in her masterpiece Dot in the Universe, where she pulls out all the stops and unleashes the full force of her imagination. Ellmann has it out against aging, infirmity, and general unhappiness, the cruelty of the universe and the barbarity of human beings. Fulfillment doesn't present itself to her hopeful and hopeless, lovelorn protagonists. It is the illusive Grail they compose their grim jeremiads to.

Present for the reader's reflection is a fixation with ice hockey, cramps of a sensitive nature, and other unexplainable absurdities. The novel would have gone off without a hitch if it weren't for digressions, transgressions and lists. They intercede the story whenever the protagonists interact in a semi-interesting way. Unlike in Mimi, not a lot of participation occurs between the elements of story and the outward-directed commentary. If she could, Ellmann would operate solely within the confines of her characters' heads, as she does in her massive psychological tome Ducks, Newburyport. The outside world is only a medium through which the opinions and perceptions of these literary players wade. Nothing is as real as their own vexations. I got the sense that Ellmann started writing without much thought where she was going with it and then the pen started veering off wildly as she attempted to navigate fictional automatons through the tangled web of her own discontented worldview.

Still, she is an intelligent writer tossing aside the reigns, and training the rifle of her seething resentment on the personal and trivial tragedies of human lives. ( )

One of the best books I've read, this long mediation of the causes of loneliness was a tremendous tour de force. Ellmann's cast of characters is colorful and memorable, and movement of the book from lonely diary to epic parable was subtle and enjoyable. ( )

how strange, yet appealing - the book in general, and especially the lists, they made so much sense to me. ( )

I don't know who writes the critic blurbs that appear on book covers like this one, but I think someone must be having me on this time.

'Quirky, striking .. successfully portrays her the tortured psychology of modern love' says the Spectator. 'Funny, original and altogether excellent' according to the Literary Review. 'An anarchic lament of such scope and intensity that it has an almost vertiginous quality to it', the reviewer in the Independent says.

I might be living in a parallel universe, or feeling unusually curmudgeonly, or overreacting to all that Christmas bonhomie ... but I resented every moment I wasted on this. I only kept reading to see if it got better - and because I could not believe there was not more after all the impressive reviews. Even more confounding, this was was nominated for Britain's prestigious Orange Prize for Fiction.

There's no doubt that Ellman can write: the interesting and sometimes bizarre lists presented throughout are clever and well-constructed; there are some snatches of well written poetry; and promise in some of the characters. Unfortunately, the rest of it is puerile, pretentious and irritating.

Oh, and a warning: there is gratuitous coarse language which to my mind adds nothing to what passes for the narrative. ( )