REVIEWS OF LIFERS
 

John O'Brien, author of Frustrated Young Men, found Lifers and deigned to review it, and here's an edited version of the review: ". . .While ostensibly being about three twentysomething guys who transitioned from collegiate under achieving to corporate bottom feeding [(sic) from the back cover], the book is mostly taken up by these three slackers (Dub, the protagonist, Trim, and Dan) in-fighting, drinking, smoking, and setting up a big heist which they hope will somehow make their lives better. The hook works; when I felt like putting the book down, I couldn't, for the simple reason that I wanted to see whether they pulled off the caper.

Along the way there's a sex scene, a love affair, some edgy experimental stream of consciousness stuff, and a bunch of other crap. The thing is, nothing much happens. This is not one of those books that has a bunch of plot twists. If a normal plot looks something like a jagged mountain with a bunch of false summits rising to a climax, LIFERS is more like a graph of the movement of a sweaty drunk furtively trying to wrap his bed-sheets around him.

If you're me, that's a good thing. If you're me, you love reading ANYTHING that does not meet the standard three or five act breakdown. So, I personally, liked LIFERS. . .And the end of the book had a palpable emotional hit. I digged it; it made sense. Filled with the nostalgia of a late twenty year old for their early twenties, this book could have used an aggressive editor (for instance, the whole first chapter is unnecessary and can be safely skipped), I think, overall, it succeeds. . ."

Some guy named Craig Carpenter: "This book kind of sucked, but it looked good at the library and it was short so it's not like it mattered that much. I was taken in by the exceptional About The Author thing at the back, one of the most entertaining I've ever read. . .I don't know what I was expecting. Maybe the book version of "Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels" and set in the U.S. I didn't get that. Oh well. Like I said, I'm not out a whole lot. It was short. And my screensaver is now the scrolling marquee displaying the sentence: "You wouldn't know crazy if Charles Manson was eating Fruit Loops on your front porch.""

The way I look at it, as long as they’re quoting something, even if it’s my back cover copy (which I myself wrote), I’ve succeeded in entertaining you, and that’s all that matters.

Asha Anderson of Reddog: "Lifers is set in the gray clam beds of Middle America where promises and dreams taunt rather than inspire. Somers can be a very funny guy but this time he ruthlessly draws the reader in and down. It's one thing to find yourself feeling sympathetic towards the self-imposed plight of the characters in this noir tale but Somers make the reader empathize, which is disturbing given that he makes sure all glamour and promise is completely hosed away. Lifers is a sobering look through bleary eyes at a journey without a compass. It leaves no way back, offers no way forward but raises some interesting questions that are impossible to put into words."

Tirdad Derakhshani of The Philadelphia Inquirer: "Lifers...does contain Somers' best writing. A cross between Dilbert and the movie Office Space, the story follows the misadventures of three New York losers in their 20s who are stuck at dead-end jobs. Dub, the narrator, works as a copy editor ("a junior member of the comma counters and style gurus") at a publishing house. He got the job hoping it would advance his career as a novelist. But after a few years in "cubicle hell," he is on the verge of a breakdown...Like the zine [The Inner Swine], Lifers suffers from over-writing: Somers piles it on too high sometimes. But his angst- ridden characters are well drawn and curiously likable. The novel's a must read for those with talent or potential (or who at least think they have talent) stuck in loser jobs."

Bruce Allen of The New York Times Book Review: "Midlife crises arrive early for the three young New Yorkers who aspire to lives of crime in this engaging, laid-back first novel. Damien, a jaded slacker who writes excruciatingly bad poetry and works as a video store clerk, is game for almost anything that gives offense and exhibits his individuality. His roommate, Dan, is an alcoholic accountant belligerently mourning the loss of the girlfriend who has dumped him. And Phil, who narrates, intermittently considers himself the sanest and least dangerous among them. He's an underemployed ''cubicle jockey'' at a Manhattan publishing house, whose office equipment and furnishings the three plot to hijack, then fence. This casually planned caper draws in Dan's more criminally accomplished Uncle Tommy and Phil's streetwise cousin Frankie, a serial carjacker -- both promising comic characters who aren't given enough to do, by either the fledgling robbers or their author. The only other character who matters much is a waitress named Chick, the erotic object of Phil's unrealized dreams. Jeff Somers observes these amiable sociopaths with a funky wit that revs up nicely whenever the three friends are companionably abusing one another, but stalls whenever his novel's undernourished plot threatens to upstage the miscellaneous noodling."

Alex Good of GoodReports.net: "'Ah, what shall I be at fifty/Should Nature keep me alive,/If I find the world so bitter/When I am but twenty-five?' - Tennyson
    At fifty? Rather consider what you will be at thirty. By then you will have graduated from apathy to full bitterness, on your way to becoming a real bastard: 
    "Daniel Quinn was a rarity: a truly nice guy, albeit going slightly brown around the edges in his mid-twenties. Fill a guy with beer and coat him with rejection often enough, and even the nicest guys will wither into something more resembling a bastard. Dan had enough mothers-milk niceness in him to go another ten years before becoming a real bastard, but he was beginning to show bastard tendencies, and everyone who knew him simultaneously rejoiced and despaired at the thought."
    Daniel Quinn is one of three young men in Lifers desperate for change. The other two are Trim, a poet who works at a video store, and Dub, the narrator, who has a decent job at a publishing house. (Exactly what Dub does at the publishing house isn't clear, but whatever it is he's sick of it.) Despair over their lot in life leads the three to come up with a plan to steal a load of office equipment from Dub's employer.  
    It's a petty score, but these are not big men. 
    In most new contemporary fiction the plot is of less interest than the presentation. This is in part because the current generation of writers are such engaging stylists, but it is also due to the fact that few people seem to care about such things as structure anymore. The present literary age is one of wit, and while we may be tempted to disparage wit as so much empty entertainment (as I admit to doing in my review of Douglas Coupland's Miss Wyoming), chances are writers like Coupland and Ellis will be remembered longer than our supposedly serious literary lions like Rushdie and Ondaatje. At least we can say they are succeeding on some level. 
    Lifers is a fun, honest book - the kind that makes criticism seem almost beside the point. Its minor failings are almost predictable for a first novel, like the conventional positioning of the narrator as an unhappy but attractive medium between two failed extremes. Reading Somers I was reminded of how the loser is perhaps the most difficult character for any author to create. The loser is the anti-anti-hero, the outcast who doesn't even succeed at being cool, the failure who can never be redeemed. Despite his feelings of inadequacy, Dub is always recognizably a hero: intelligent, sensitive, decisive, desirable. 
    One reason the genuine loser may be so hard to find in today's fiction is because the social and cultural environment is now seen as so degraded anything remotely human automatically rises above it. It may be significant that the morality of the crime in Lifers isn't even a passing consideration. The only thing the hero is concerned about is what effect it might have on his life. Whatever revenge one can take against this corrupt, fallen world is just since it is also inevitably trivial, as Dub is finally brought to understand.  
    But back to superfluous criticism. Somers is a talented writer, but not always a careful one. There are, for example, a lot of inconsistencies in his narrative. (For more on problems with consistency in the contemporary novel, see my review of Chuck Palahniuk's Choke.) At one point Dub compares his limited wardrobe to that of the office workers he sees downtown, saying that he only owns "a pair of Chucks, and a pair of soft leather loafers." Yet thirty pages earlier he told us he had "six pairs of Converse Chucks" under his desk. Did he throw them out?
    This may be quite a minor thing, but there is a whopper of an inconsistency relating to Chick's knowledge of the plan. (Chick being the chick. The nicknames are all a little much, and don't help when some of the characters slip into stereotypes.) Throughout much of the book there is a lot made of the fact that Chick is in the dark about what the boys are up to. Yet in Chapter 3 Dub makes it clear that the conspirators have "told her everything." She is said to be an "unknowing confidant." Why then does she spend the rest of the book wondering what's going on? If she's been told, how can she be unknowing? 
    None of this will affect anyone's enjoyment of the book, or their appreciation of the lives it represents. One hesitates to call Somers a distinctive voice, at least yet, but he is entertaining and his vision is important.

Jeff Kay of The West Virginia Surf Report: “I was very disappointed by Jeff Somers' novel Lifers. I really wanted to hate it, but the bastard had to go and write a good book. How insensitive is that? Jeff, of course, publishes the humor zine The Inner Swine, and has done the unforgivable by selling an actual novel to an actual publisher, thus setting himself up for some deep-dish jealous resentment by less-successful underground writers everywhere. The book is about three post-collegiate buddies living in NYC who are growing disenchanted with their lives, and make a drunken decision one night to commit grand larceny. "The Caper" is supposed to bring them enough money to jump them out of the various ruts they've found themselves in, and most of the book deals with its planning -- over more drinks. The characters are funny and distinctive, and the dialog is real. A couple of scenes made me laugh out loud, and there's an abundance of great lines throughout. I especially enjoyed the section where the narrator, Dub, is coerced into reluctant and awkward sex by a girl he has no feelings for. Although a robbery is plotted and committed, this isn't an adventure story. It's more about the three main characters, and their attitudes toward their all-too-typical situations. At the end of the book, as the trio begins to drift apart, I was horrified to feel a twinge of sadness that they weren't able to remain friends. I actually cared. Jeff Somers, you make me sick.”

Deborah Rysso, Booklist Magazine: “Three twentysomethings searching for quality of life in the big city are failing miserably at finding it at local watering holes and devitalizing jobs. Phil “Dub” Dublen schlepps himself to his bottom-rung position at a publishing house, where he does as little as possible. Trim dresses all in black, bleaches his spiky hair, and writes and recites terrible poetry. Between his bouts of caustic sarcasm and demented smiles, a peculiar, calculated charm surfaces. Quiet but potentially violent, Dan is an alcoholic and an unemployed Irishman. All three slackers bemoan their lack of writing careers, financial success, and meaningful lives until the day they hatch a boozy plan to rob Dub’s publishing house of its expensive office technology. Surprisingly enough, the heist succeeds, but nothing really changes. Somers’ dialogue is funny, his characters oddly likable, and his plot pleasingly unlikely, adding up to a highly entertaining if chillingly accurate reflection of the apathetic work ethics and life disappointments of Gen X postcollegiate dreamers.”

Frank J. Marcopolos, The Whirligig: “Jeff Somers is the voice of the Jersey dive bar, the same fertile soil that produced, among others, Bruce Springsteen, Southside Johnny, and Too Much Joy.  And then there are the countless others who have actually succeeded in avoiding the trappings of fame and fortune, which is the fate, I believe, that awaits Mr. Somers.  Big Time Success may elude him, for his fiction often relies on endings that are far too real for mainstream consumption.  They lack the glam of Hollywood final scenes, which, by coincidence, are also absent in the lives of actual people.  Then again, this may be the very reason Mr. Somers achieves big time success, allowing him to spend his days wallowing in hundred dollar bills, champagne, and plastically enhanced women.  Life can be funny that way.
    In Mr. Somers’s soon-to-be released novel Lifers (Creative Arts Books), three New Jersey pals, Trim, a bad poet, Dub, an unfulfilled employee at a publishing company, and Dan, a recently unemployed drunkard, decide to alleviate their suffering by robbing Dub’s place of employment.
    These are typical Somers characters (one may find Mr. Somers’s fiction in abundance in his entertaining zine, The Inner Swine): slackers, drinkers, smokers, with some Jersey charm and wit thrown in.  They are gritty Jersey real.  They are likably flawed.  One of Mr. Somers’s biggest triumphs in this novel is that Dub, the narrator, has an insightful, self-conscious nature which allows the reader to root for him.  Were he simply a lazy oaf, the novel would not nearly be so enjoyable.
    Another delight of this novel is Mr. Somers’s ear for dialogue.  It rarely rings false.  He manages to maintain character continuity, with a combination of subtlety and humor.  Mr. Somers’s choice of setting (mainly Jersey dive bars) reflects the desperation of his three main characters. 
    “The Plan” itself is a metaphor for Mr. Somers’s generation: while it succeeds (they are not caught,) it has no real positive impact on the participants’ lives.  Things go on largely as they did before.  In the end, all it gets them is rid of each other. 
    While Hollywood may miss out on Somers’s style, I’m not so sure that is a bad thing.  There are a growing number of people who are fed up with typical Hollywood shlock anyway.  And I for one celebrate writers like Jeff Somers who eschew that path for one more dear to their own experience.”

DB Pedlar of Skunk's Life: "The word Lifers brings to mind the military or those in prison serving a life term. Jeff Somers adds another connotation to the term, lifers. Lifers can also be defined as the majority of people who live a mundane life and experience a brief and rare glimpse of a better future. They'll make an effort to seize the opportunity but the rut is too deep and they'll slip back into the only life they know.
    Dub, Trim, and Dan are friends who experience a momentary and rare glimpse at a better future, the only problem is they believe they have to commit a criminal act to achieve it.
    The surface story line takes the reader along with the three young men through the conception, the planning and the execution of a crime. The story has the potential to delve deeper into relationships, the workplace, responsibility and more if the readers will examine the well-developed main characters. The secondary characters do a fine job of exposing strengths and weaknesses as well.
    Jeff's writing flows smooth from paragraph to paragraph and chapter to chapter. The dialogue is spiced with humor which adds additional flavor to the novel.
    I understand when a writer uses vulgarity (f-this, f-that and other unimaginative words) to expose a character's lack of descriptive words, or disrespect for others, or just plain herd vocabulary. This language, more often than not, is the communication of choice by the characters in this book. Sadly, this form of communication has become commonplace and part of our everyday language that we hear in the work place, at play and in our entertainment. I wished writers would change the language trend and use the multitude of words that are still available instead of resorting to tired and over-used words. Then again, two of the characters in this novel admit to being writers and not very good at it.
    And yes, there is a sex scene and reference to sex between characters. The sex scene itself is intriguing. A couple of graphic references but the act itself is not described with detailed close-ups of fleshy folds or bodily fluids, instead it paints a word picture of what is going on inside the heads of the characters involved. Well written with additional insight into the characters.
    "Wake up!" is something a reader may have the desire to scream at the characters. We are aware of or even know some of these people with the same characteristics as the characters in the book. The fog in front of their eyes does not allow them a clear view of their lives or even their so-called friends. "Walk away! Run if you have to, but rid your life of those ‘friends' before they pull you deeper into the fog." is more advice a reader may want to give one or more of the characters.
    Jeff's characters latch on to an insane suggestion and develop it into a plan. The plan, conceived from apathy and disappointment, will envelop their lifestyle and change them forever. A sympathetic and non-judgmental look at a struggle to break away and start anew. Sad souls who speak with amusing dialogue.
    I enjoyed the time I got to spend with Jeff Somers' Lifers."