Product Description

Patricia Marx is one of the finest comic writers of her time, as readers of The New Yorker and fans of Saturday Night Live already know. Her fiction debut is an endlessly entertaining comic novel about one woman's romantic fixation on her first boyfriend.

Marx's unabashedly neurotic heroine falls for philosopher Eugene Obello during her graduate school days in Cambridge, England. Why would anyone fall for a man who receives a grant to pursue Ego Studies? Why would that person remain obsessed, even after this guy marries and becomes a father? By "obsessed," we mean, well...sex and lusting and longing and hoping and waiting for this cad who is spread too thin. Her friends loathe him. Why can't she drop him? Is it because she was the only virgin on campus before she bumped into Eugene (a man who was hardly a virgin)? Is it because he kept a copy of the Magna Carta in his pocket? "You know what I think it really was?" she reflects. "He was a narcissist. I love narcissists...you don't have to buoy them up." When things get unbearable, our girl gives up trying to write her thesis -- and tries to give up on Eugene. She says good-bye to her dormitory room, decorated in a color she calls veal, and becomes a TV writer in New York on the hit sketch-comedy show Taped But Proud. Coincidentally, Eugene moves to New York as well -- to teach a seminar called "Toward a Philosophy of the Number Two" ("And if that goes well," he says, "they might let me have a go at the number three"). More years of lusting and longing, hoping and waiting. Until a spectacular event changes everything.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #592641 in Books
• Published on: 2007-01-09
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 240 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Marx's unnamed protagonist, a Baltimore native turned Cambridge University graduate student, is struggling with her thesis on West Indian immigration when she meets Eugene Obello, fresh from Princeton and at Cambridge on a philosophy teaching fellowship. Though he's self-absorbed, distracted and cheesy ("I will always feel a great deal of agape toward you, O my everlasting," he tells the narrator) she falls for him. But he soon leaves her for the frequently ill Margaret, and the narrator is once again alone with her incomplete thesis. She quits school, returns to the states and lands a writing gig at a Saturday Night Live–type show, but Eugene lingers in her mind. He, of course, resurfaces in New York, and the two embark on an affair. (He has since married Margaret.) Marx, a former SNL writer and current New Yorker contributor, undermines her main source of tension—the narrator's obsession with Eugene—by failing to present Eugene as anything more than a brainy fop, and though his demise is fitting, it'll have E.M. Forster fans crying foul. (Jan.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From The Washington Post
Reviewed by Claudia Deane There are college boyfriends. There are caddishly bad college boyfriends. And there are caddishly bad college boyfriends you somehow can't quit. And now, thanks to Patricia Marx's Him Her Him Again the End of Him, there's Eugene.

Encountered while her 21-year-old narrator is studying abroad at Cambridge University, Eugene is a budding philosopher, fresh out of Princeton and AmeriCorps with a copy of the Magna Carta in his pocket. He's the kind of guy who says, "Did I tell you that I've written a devastating critique of Elie Wiesel that will turn Holocaust studies on its head?" Who believes that French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan drew crucial points from him -- "an audacious theory," our narrator notes, "since Eugene hadn't entered Lacan's field of work until Lacan was dead."

But what pseudo-intellectual young woman can resist a lanky grad student who says, "Your kisses are so recondite, my peach, that they are almost notional"? A man who calls her "my juju," "my singular dodo bird" and "my tender duckling"? Who presses himself against her atop Castle Hill and is moved to a disquisition on Sir Isaac Newton?

She's enraptured. So what if Eugene only wants to see her in the hours following his dinner and preceding his bedtime? As the Go-Go's said: "Someone always loves a little more." Cue obsession, heartbreak.

Marx -- former Saturday Night Live writer, current New Yorker contributor, author of humor books -- makes the most of her characters' time at Cambridge. (Who can resist a few good Stephen Hawking jokes?) And she's on top of her game when she sends her narrator back to New York to work for SNL competitor "Taped But Proud," a show run by a former dental hygienist who is in turn run by her astrologer. (Day four's assignment: Write a sketch about a journalist tortured for criticizing the government in Belarus. "There was also a siege on an orphanage. . . . A few children were killed, I think. It could be about that . . . but it still has to be really, really funny.") Alas, the narrator's erstwhile boyfriend eventually appears stateside -- with his new wife in tow. You'd think a wife would complicate matters, but a one-sided relationship based on sex turns out to be a hardy thing. The novel's start is so fiercely funny that you don't really care that nobody could pine for a guy this obnoxious. One of the narrator's friends says, "I can't believe you still know him. . . . He's a cad and a bore and a sneak and a fake and a narcissist and a braggart."

"I'm sure you're right," she replies. "But that's just one side of him."

By the end, the gag goes a bit stale, like an SNL skit dragging on several beats too long. But there are so many sharp, random laughs in this book -- including some silly "Appendices" at the end -- that even extended exposure to Eugene is worthwhile.

Reviewed by Claudia Deane
Copyright 2007, The Washington Post. All Rights Reserved.

From Booklist
For those who have spent hours listening to a girlfriend relate the latest about her ongoing obsession, or who have been trapped on a flight next to someone spilling out her life story, this first novel by a former writer for Saturday Night Live will be familiar. The unnamed narrator pours out the hilarious tale of her long-standing obsession with a miserable boyfriend. As with most obsessions, this one is inexplicable both to the narrator's friends and the reader. Eugene, who never fails to remind that his grandfather was a contender for the Nobel Prize for Economics, is an academic who spouts creative pet names ("my orbital core") and periodically disappears--sometimes for years. Despite improbable plot twists, minor plot inconsistencies, and a definitively uncatchy title, there are some laugh-out-loud moments. And when the narrator explains she cannot explain "why I remained so fixed on Eugene. . . . In lieu of explanation, will you accept acknowledgment?" we want to write the line down so that we can use it the next time our own taste is questioned. Rebecca Singer
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Customer Reviews

Funny, not hilarious... and good, not great
While working on her thesis at Cambridge University, the narrator of Him Her Him Again The End of Him meets Eugene, a philosophy major who waltzes in and out of her life over the next decade and whom she obsessively alters even the smallest details of her life to accommodate. Though Eugene routinely walks all over her and steps on her oft-profferred heart, she still comes crawling back with disappointing regularity and puts her own need aside to make room for his. Over the course of the novel she sets aside her thesis, leaves England, moves in with her parents, finds work as a writer for a television sketch comedy, loses work, and through it all the only constant is her obsession with getting Eugene to love her.

The protagonist of Patricia Marx's first novel is in equal measure an amusing, instrospective, overthinking mess and an irresponsible, unambitious, mediocre victim. Whichever part of her you enjoy most seems to skew your overall views of the book. I couldn't get over the way she let Eugene treat her, though I am all for first love and the way it can devastate and influence the way you live your life. Though the book is supposed to be dubbed one of the funniest ever written, I thought the story itself was depressing. It is funny a lot of the time and the narrator herself is amusing a lot of the time without even trying, but the tone and direction of the book weren't at all entertaining. I liked a good deal of this story, but I hated Eugene and as he was the principal male character of the story it made it difficult to enjoy the entire novel. Him Her Him Again The End of Him was funny, not hilarious, and it was most definitely good--not great.

Him Her....Fun!
Despite its unfortunate title, which refers to the sections the book is divided into, this book is indeed a fun read, and quite engaging. The author, Patricia Marx, has a unique turn of phrase that will at times bring you to laugh out loud, and will cause you to feel the frustration of our heroine, whose name we never learn.

The plot is basic: our heroine, a student at Cambridge, meets and almost immediately gives both her heart and her virginity to Eugene, a cad of the first order. Despite his many faults, our heroine finds herself literally obsessed with Eugene, even after he dumps her for the sickly Margaret. We watch as, over a period of ten years, our heroine pines for the shallow and selfish Eugene, putting aside her own needs and bouncing from job to job as she searches for whatever it is that will make her life perfect. Eugene flits in and out of her life like an annoying fly, and yet she allows him to dictate almost everything about her existence. It is both frustrating and funny as we follow her non-growth into its eventual climax, cheering her on and hoping that she will experience an epiphany that allows Eugene to get what's coming to him.

Marx has a brilliant writing style, and she uses it to both string the reader along on the heroine's web of obsession and to make said reader laugh as she reveals bits and pieces that bring the story to its end. At times it felt as though our heroine would never reach enlightenment, and the story dragged as a result. But overall this is a gem of a novel, and should be recommended to all who enjoy an author with a gift for comedy.

Funny, but not enough
If there is one problem with nearly every SNL skit-turned movie it's that the audience is asked to endure a one-joke premise stretched unmercifully into a feature length film.

This is the print version of same. Smart yet neurotic girl falls for arrogant cad, whines to witty and eccentric friends, tolerates family, comes out a bit wiser. The shallow characters are asked to carry a storyline that doesn't have the interest to last through a novel. There are truly clever moments that had me laughing out loud, but the plot was disappointingly simple.

This has the feel of a Tina Fey hopeful trying to step away from her skit comedy roots -- but only a few steps away. I'd like to read something more ambitious from Marx; she has talent.