Review of That's what Ed said

[Zoe Fickbohm]

[Following is a volunteer review of "That's what Ed said" by U A Dumas.]

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2 out of 5 stars

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This was a stereotypical coming-of-age story for our narrator, Ed. It takes place over the course of his life, beginning with his early childhood in the 1950s. It focuses on his teenage years as a pothead and then glosses over his adult life until the present day during the COVID-19 pandemic. It offers a fascinating insight into what a man remembers most about his life and what he cares about.

The story is quite hard to follow, with random details inserted about things irrelevant to the current scene. On several occasions, he mentions having dogs, but he never discusses the dogs again. The narrative repeats itself many times. It goes back to the narrator's teenage years twice to retell the same story with different details. But he never goes over the details necessary to visualize the story. The narrator never describes anything, except for naming the specific cars he drove at certain times in his life. The only description given to any characters is the women the narrator dates or sleeps with, and they are only described as "beautiful." The characters themselves are uninteresting and one-sided, including the narrator, who skips over a significant part of his life that would have made the story more interesting and compelling. He repeatedly comments on how his brother and best friend are the smartest people he knows, but he never provides examples. 

The author also makes several remarks without fact-checking, such as claiming that the Devil’s Tower is over 2,000 feet tall when it is less than 900 feet. This makes me question pretty much everything mentioned in the book. Some may say it’s a mode of storytelling, but to me, it is lazy. The lack of detail in the story makes it hard to enjoy. He glosses over the most interesting and entertaining aspects of the story, so we can read the more shocking aspects sooner. I would not recommend this book because, no matter how interesting the story is, it is difficult to follow, and the characters are not interesting enough for me.

I think this book is a 2/4 and 2/5. It was an interesting read because of the idea, it just fell short on the execution.

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That's what Ed said
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