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Defending Jacob A Novel William Landay Books

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Defending Jacob A Novel William Landay Books

If you were to check on my Amazon reviews you would not find fiction books among them. I have tried numerous times to read a book of fiction and quit in frustration after a few chapters. Despite failing at my attempts at fiction I decided to try reading "Defending Jacob." I surprisingly found the book to be a riveting read, and very difficult to put down. Perhaps it was the dialogue the author provided that kept me interested, or the real life frustrations and agony that were so eloquently expressed throughout the book. I thought author William Landay expressed himself vividly in describing the feelings of the Barber family in their relationships with one another and the other characters in the story.

As I said I have found it very difficult to read fiction, but each time I had to reluctantly put the book down I looked forward eagerly to getting back into the story once again. As a reader of non-fiction I found this book of fiction an easy five star book. I highly recommend this book to anyone, either a reader of fiction or non-fiction.


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Defending Jacob A Novel William Landay Books Reviews

This is a haunting story that will stay with you long after you read the final chapter. It is the ultimate look at nature vs. nurture in the realm of murder and mayhem.

While the title was a bit distracting, as I expected this to be purely a courtroom drama, this book was astonishing on many levels and will leave you reeling. While the effect of our physical construction on our behavior and character is a revolutionary idea, a completely new way to think about ourselves, perhaps we’ve always unconsciously done this and science has now put a fine point on it.

Is it possible to be hard wired to murder or commit other crimes through genetic material handed down through our ancestral DNA? Can our DNA predispose us to violence as we’ve believed it has to disease?

This novel is so intense that I can hardly imagine a reader who is not affected by the message and horrified by the ending. It is hard to think there will be a reader who is not somehow moved by this novel. It should strike a nerve in every reader, regardless of where they fall out on the message. Highly recommended. I will be reading a lot more of William Landay.
Oh. My. God.

You know, I nearly abandoned this book based purely on the first couple of pages of the book because I disliked the court transcript formatting for those pages. I thought it was difficult to follow and lacked depth (which ought to be obvious). If I'd not pressed on, I'd have missed one of the most entertaining reads I've enjoyed in some time.

Ironically, these first couple of pages, and the way they tie the entire story together and wrap it up in a tidy bow, are precisely the reason this book made it onto my coveted list of five star books. (Alright, alright. Maybe not COVETED. I'm a nobody, after all.)

I realize I'm fangirling, but this book is BRILLIANT. It's not just the way the author ties one end of the book to the other so skillfully. It's not just the brilliant pacing which rarely ("never" is too strong a word for me) drags. It's not just the fact that every move the author made throughout this novel was so deliberately planned (and, no doubt, well-revised). Amazingly, it's not what this book made me feel.

Oh no. It's what this book DIDN'T make me feel.

Truly and astonishingly perhaps the MOST psychological book I've ever read, brilliantly executed, and outstanding in its construction.

Oh yes. I loved this book.

But that's not what you REALLY want to know. You want to know if YOU will love this book.

I like to give my readers information about the book -- a warning label, if you will, of things about the book which may not appeal to some readers. When I first started writing, I couldn't think of a single thing I'd want you to know before you invest your time (and potentially your money) in this novel. Fortunately, the more I wrote, the more cognizant I became of some of the flaws in this novel.

So here's what you need to know before you purchase, or borrow this book.

First, Landay writes in huge blocks of text.

See how short my paragraphs are here on my blog? I try to keep them a length which is easily readable for most people. We tolerance is lower, of course, than print tolerance, but I try to keep my paragraphs at a length readers can easily scan without losing any significant amount of information. A paragraph is generally about five sentences long, often four lines long in text. This paragraph is five sentences long.

Landay's paragraphs sometimes span the length of AN ENTIRE PAGE of text. This makes it more difficult for the reader to scan the paragraph for relevant information, slows down speed readers, and can make even a standard reader (one reading every word at a normal pace) frustrated because its point seems interminable. I consider myself a "standard reader" and Landay's paragraphs slowed me down considerably.

This is never more relevant than at the end of the novel.

Because following the climax, Landay continues with the story.

Now if you're like me, you like something after the climax. You're probably not looking for much more story, just something to conclude what you've been reading and to wrap up the book. Some books are terrible about ending immediately after the climax -- what we'd call a "cliffhanger," sometimes without any intention of continuing as a series. So I appreciate the effort. Really, I do.

The problem is the massive paragraphs. They initially felt superfluous, as though they intended only to tell the reader the general sense of what happened after the climactic moment. I asked myself several times, while reading page-long paragraphs, why the author had included this information. (I'm glad I kept reading, because the story actually continued, but suffice it to say this was frustrating, and somewhat tedious.)

I know what you're probably thinking "Well good! There's something to wrap the story up!" And if you are a die hard for post-climax conclusions, this will definitely be helpful for you.

But this post-climax storyline goes on for several chapters. I'll be the first to admit it's important, and it seems the author had it in mind the entire time, but it's poorly paced. A quick-moving story takes a turn for slow and drawn out. And maybe -- just MAYBE -- this was information I didn't WANT to have.

Not that it destroys the story, because it doesn't. But I'd have been fine with a bit more left to the imagination. (Intriguingly, one of the one-star reviews on argues that the entire story leaves TOO MUCH to the imagination!)

In another note about the ending, it's similar to the ending of another book I've read. Not that it's predictable, because HOLY MOLY I DIDN'T SEE THAT COMING! But the resemblance struck me as odd and jarring. I didn't like the ending of THAT book, but in this case I felt like it worked. (No, I'm not going to tell you which book, in case you've read it and can then compare notes.)

Finally, I want you to know before committing to read this book that the characters aren't likable.

I always find myself wondering at the fact this is such a BIG deal for so many reviewers. "I didn't like the characters." Really? Do you like EVERYBODY you come into contact with on a day to day basis? Now granted, even the worst monsters in history have had FRIENDS who loved them in spite of their flaws, but that's beside the point.

Some people just aren't likable, and Andy, Laurie, and Jacob Barber are on the list of unlikable people in the world. (So, as it happens, are Derek Yoo, and Paul Duffy. You're going to despise Ben Rifkin and Neal Loguidice by the time it's done as well (though that is less veiled than the aforementioned characters).

There's good in each of them. Well, MOST of them, anyway. But I don't think you're supposed to like them. No, not even Andy, the narrative character, Jacob's father. Not even sweet, sympathetic Laurie. While not caricatures, I do believe these characters were made intentionally exactly the way they are. So if you're reading this book, and you pause to think to yourself "something seems to be missing from this characterization," try to consider some people have something missing from their personality and that's just the way the author intended it to be.

Oh yes, I loved this book. LOVED this book. It was amazing! I'm not finding many negative reviews I don't feel missed the point of the novel. I think you'll enjoy it too, if you can live with the aforementioned flaws.
I really regret having read this book. It was upsetting and awakened memories I am unwilling to relive. For me that means the book was good. I am a retired criminal defense attorney. The last ten years of my career were spent exclusively defending murder and death penalty murder cases. I go out of my way to avoid reading crime novels or watching crime shows or movies because they are so removed from any semblance of reality as to be laughable. I am especially disturbed by that genre of fiction that treats murder as a parlor game. Murder is ugly and never entertaining. I decided to read this book after reading the review of another criminal lawyer that is a GR friend. I found this book to be mercifully short on courtroom drama and case investigation and preparation but nevertheless accurate in most respects. Where this book shines is in illustrating the devastation the accusation of a serious crime can visit upon an average middle class family. While I was less than pleased with the theatrical ending the behavior of the family members and their friends and neighbors was spot-on accurate as was the behavior of the prosecuting attorney. In sum I'd say this was probably the most accurately depicted crime novel I've ever read excepting, of course, the device employed as an ending but, like I said, I don't read many crime novels. Now I need to find a book to help me forget what this book has me remembering.
If you were to check on my reviews you would not find fiction books among them. I have tried numerous times to read a book of fiction and quit in frustration after a few chapters. Despite failing at my attempts at fiction I decided to try reading "Defending Jacob." I surprisingly found the book to be a riveting read, and very difficult to put down. Perhaps it was the dialogue the author provided that kept me interested, or the real life frustrations and agony that were so eloquently expressed throughout the book. I thought author William Landay expressed himself vividly in describing the feelings of the Barber family in their relationships with one another and the other characters in the story.

As I said I have found it very difficult to read fiction, but each time I had to reluctantly put the book down I looked forward eagerly to getting back into the story once again. As a reader of non-fiction I found this book of fiction an easy five star book. I highly recommend this book to anyone, either a reader of fiction or non-fiction.