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Customer Reviews of Men in Black

A book spoiled by its characters
Sam Holland, one-time serious author of two well-received novels, can barely pay his bills until a book he tossed off and published pseudonymously starts flying off the shelves. His Visitors from Above is a hit among conspiracy theorists, all UFOs and alien abductions and the enigmatic disinformation specialists of Scott Spencer's title--those fellows who, "sallow of complexion" and inappropriately dressed, can convince alien spotters, Tommy Lee Jones-like, that they haven't seen anything whatever out of the ordinary. But financial success and the celebrity of a national book tour are difficult to swallow when they spring from a product Sam can neither feel proud of nor claim as his own. They are, moreover, empty rewards against the backdrop of Sam's crumbling personal life, his failing marriage, his teenaged son's recent disappearance.

Scott Spencer's Men in Black offers readers a complex story about one man's belated recognition of his life's value. Unfortunately, Spencer's late bloomer was not a man I could empathize with. Sam and his wife and son, the characters through whose eyes the story is told, are unlikable creatures who are dissatisfied with their circumstances--the perfectly good, indeed arguably enviable circumstances of their lives--and they make matters worse for themselves by behaving badly. In the end I did not care what the Hollands wound up doing with their lives--though I was certain alien abduction was not in the cards for them--figuring that they had merited whatever unpleasantness (divorce, incarceration) might lay in store after the last page. A good premise, then, but Men in Black fails, finally, because its characters cannot engage the reader's emotions.

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Brilliant or bad first impression?
After hearing Scott Spencer on NPR recently I was very eager to read one of his novels. Perhaps I chose poorly because I was very disappointed by Men in Black. The story is engaging at first and at times takes interesting turns, but the characters are all so unlikable and their choices so frustrating that the book put me in a bad mood every time I opened it. One could argue that a great book moves the reader, sometimes in directions that make him uncomfortable. Maybe that's the case. So I move on to my other criticisms. Regarding structure, it felt like an early draft. I was baffled by the seemingly unmotivated change of person (from first to third and back). Unlike in The Poisonwood Bible, the change of person in Men in Black seems like a "cheat" rather than a stylistic choice. And Spencer's decision to drop the other POVs entirely--and the corresponding subplots with them--in the final section of the book left me feeling unsatisfied and scratching my head (another reviewer talks about this so I won't go into details). Finally, I was very annoyed by the tangential metaphors that dripped from the pages like my melting snow cone on the beach in Acapulco when I was ten (in case you needed an example of what I'm talking about). I'm not an avid reader of current literary fiction; perhaps this kind of writing is in fashion. I find it pretentious and self-important. Because the narrator is a writer I can't say whether this annoying technique was Spencer's or Sam's (the narrator, who IS quite pretentious and self-important). If it's the latter it's a quite brilliant use of first person narrative to help characterize Sam. I'm just not so sure. To be fair, there were parts that I liked and I might give Spencer a second chance, but overall Men in Black was disappointing.

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One Of The Best Written Books I've Read
After reading Men In Black I started wondering why more writers couldn't write like Scott Spencer. Spencer is so vivid in his details and writes so comfortably, it's a pleasure to read. Men in Black is an extremely enjoyable look into self identity and what happens when we are truly forced to deal with who we are. After reading Men In Black I picked up Spencer's Endless Love which is equally as well written.