Give Me Everything You Have

Well written. I enjoyed the story. I couldn't imagine going through any of it. Especially when integrity is called into question. Will there be a sequel? Will you update your website? I skipped a few parts as well. As there may have been reference to feelings etc. that seemed to go off on a tangent of books that were written during this ordeal. At first I thought I purchased a book of short stories. I just wanted to know what happened to the writer and what happened to "Nazreen". I'm not sure my opinion matters as this is the first book I've read in many years. I Enjoyed the comparisons on the last few pages.

I had high hopes from this novel. The premise behind it seemed very interesting. A stalker- how cool is that? Alas, It seemed to me to be just story-telling about the author's liife with many boring details about his childhood and fantasies as a young man. The detailed accounts of knights and castles went on for pages. I found myself getting more and more frustrated and angry as I plodded through accounts that could only be of interest to the author. I wanted to yell out, "Get on with the story already!" The train ride is painful in its narrative, as though it takes the same amount of time as the trip itself. I wanted so badly for it to end!
Is he ever going to get back to the storyline?!
Sorry, but greatly disappointed. I felt this novel was written under false pretenses. This is the hardest and most boring book I have read. I hope it was good for he author to get some frustration off his chest but I resent that I literally had to pay for his catharsis, both monetarily and in wasted time. Oh please!! Get on with a story!!!

If you measure a book by the number of lines you want to read again, you should enjoy this one. The author recounts being stalked on the Internet for several years. By a female student, Nasreen. The story is almost continuously interesting.

There are puzzles. His wife's reaction is a big one for me. He says she told him "not to break off contact with her, or not too abruptly.” The author explores and fine-tunes rationale after rationale for his actions all through the book. However, at this critical point, he adopts his wife's approach without a moment to explain why stringing things out made sense.

I found myself wondering why the author, very early on, did not do what his associate (Paula) did. Paula composed a compassionate final response and then never responded to Nasreen again. Yes, the compassionate final response provoked a "torrent of outstandingly vicious" responses from Nasreen. The author doesn't say (what I suspect) that Nasreen essentially left Paula alone after that. Regardless, the circumstances screamed for a response like Paula's, but the author ruled it out. His story would have been more interesting had he tried that approach and failed, but if he succeeded? The story gets a big setback.

As the months went on, Nasreen escalated from e-mails to many other forms of attack permitted by the Internet. The author's recount of all this is interesting stuff.

I was also puzzled by the extremes he goes to explain why he doesn't think the stalker is mentally unbalanced, as she clearly is: “Even as I write this, though, I am aware of the possibility of mixed motives in what I myself am doing. I have a strong vested interest, after all, in claiming that Nasreen was fundamentally sane. ... As soon as you reduce human behavior to a pathology—label it “psychotic” or “sociopathic,” or attribute it to some kind of personality disorder—it becomes, for literary purposes, less interesting (at least to me).” Really?

In the end, the story had an enjoyable "moth to the flame" feel to it. Writers need stories and here comes one in real life, rough edges and all. Most of us would be looking for the quickest way out. But the author is a writer and writers need stories. How then to build the story into a book-length product?

Other reviewers seem put off by the author's digressions, but I wasn't. It seems a typical human reaction to want to place one's life's experiences in some large, enduring narrative.

In the end I found myself wondering whether the author welcomed the encounters. He suggests as much. Among his many runs at analyzing the circumstances, he talks about being drawn to stories “of a man seeking his own destruction.”

I'm looking forward to more of his work.