Having finished the trilogy of Exley's novels first in high school--where, I think, Exley's indulgences in oral sex, cultural masculinity, substance abuse, et cetera, can seem to a teenager like a very raw reading of the psyche--I'm impressed overall how well the final book holds up, and though I understand that structurally it's not quite as perfect or as thematically coherent as the truly great /A Fan's Notes/, /Last Notes From Home/ is a wonderful, original book full of rhetorical triumph and some genuine, quite scary emotion. To repeat the same in a much shorter sentence, I love this book. Unwieldy and odd, there is a beauty to the text's misshapenness, and I'm nothing less than grateful for it. I realize that this isn't quite a review so much as a gush, but sometimes a reader gushes. I can't guarantee that everyone, or even the majority, of readers will have my reaction to Exley's book, but if you've read /A Fan's Notes/ and want more, I would urge you to finish out the trilogy. It can be a sad experience--/Pages From a Cold Island/ is rather an unfortunate duck--but Exley still manages to be capable of some truly transcendent writing, imbued with a level of feeling that I imagine a great many other writers would find embarrassing. Gushing is what Exley does, and to gush back seems only appropriate. I can't explain it, but there were never so many tears in my eyes as there were when I finally finished this book, reading by closet light at three AM on a school night some forever increasing number of years ago.
What do You think about Last Notes From Home (1990)?
