Outside of college lit courses, endnotes are seldom found in fiction, but in You Poor Monster, numbers appear almost as often as punctuation marks - often enough, in fact, to create an alternate universe to the novel's plot..."
Atlanta Magazine - August 2005
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Michael Kun '84 used the dedication of his latest novel, You Poor Monster, to propose to his wife, Amy. Before the book was published he showed her the manuscript with the inscription, "To My Wife." Her first inclination was to joke, "I didn't know you were already married!?" But when she realized he was really proposing, she burst into tears and accepted. It's a good story, and it happens to be true, but if readers found that story in one of Kun's novels, they would legitimately question its veracity. That's because Kun, an attorney for Jackson Lewis in Los Angeles who majored in political science at Hopkins, has also authored four novels and numerous short stories. And by definition, fiction writing gives authors a license to fabricate whatever strikes their fancy. As Kun jokes, "I've chosen two professions - lawyer and novelist -- and one of those professions actually rewards you for lying."
Johns Hopkins Alumni Magazine - Fall/Winter 2005
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With the publication of his fourth novel, You Poor Monster: Or, This Should Answer Your Questions My Son, author Michael Kun has solidified himself as a master literary craftsman and a preeminent storyteller. While his previous outings were well written, entertaining mixes of comedy and pathos, something always seemed to be missing; something this reviewer could never quite touch on. Until now: What was missing was deft storytelling.
You Poor Monster, Kun's best work to date, begins when Sam Shoogey appears on lawyer Hamilton "Ham" Ashe's doorstep in the middle of the night. Ashe doesn't know what to make of the little man, but Shoogey politely greets Ashe and asks for his new neighbor's assistance in his upcoming divorce. Shoogey is an immediate enigma. He supposes to be a novelist, a college football star, a professional boxer, and a war hero. But the more outrageous his stories of accomplishment become, the less inclined Ham -- and the reader -- is to believe them. Who exactly is Shoogey? And why should we trust him?
Pop Matters - October 25, 2005
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Leave it to attorney-author Michael Kun to endow his hilarious new novel about the nature of truth, "You Poor Monster", with copious endnotes. Thirty-three pages of them.
Even the book's title, subtitle ("This Should Answer Your Questions, My Son") and byline come with endnotes. A letter from Kun's editor, "Diane!," starts the book with a warning that the author radically revised the story shortly before publication, so she felt it was appropriate to leave in all of his explanatory and sometimes desperate remarks, which were intended mostly for her.
Kun is quite the jokester, and he's an adventuresome writer.
Reading "You Poor Monster" is physically demanding - what with the flipping back and forth to see endnotes - but the delightful absurdity of the experience, along with Kun's belly-ache-inducing wit, makes it a rewarding pursuit.
The Seattle Times - August 26, 2005
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Barnes and Noble Discover Great New Writers
Readers who laughed at the acknowledgments in A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius will find a similar comic talent at work in Michael Kun's novel, You Poor Monster. Kun's narrator is Hamilton Ashe, a young corporate attorney who takes a case he doesn't much want: the contentious divorce of a charming but mercurial neighbor -- a man who will not, under any circumstances, take no for an answer. Unable to resist this larger-than-life persona, Hamilton becomes drawn into the extraordinary world of Sam Shoogey, a self-described war hero, former college football star, and current bestselling author.
But the truth of Shoogey's life has become increasingly difficult for Hamilton to ascertain, forcing him to question his client's integrity. If Shoogey is a writer, why can't Hamilton find any of his books? He has no official war record, and the university he claims to have attended denies any of his legendary achievements on the field. Has Shoogey woven a web of indefensible falsehoods?
As Hamilton 's becomes further involved in the exciting and unpredictable daily adventures of Shoogey, he fights the notion that his own life -- wife, house, kids -- might fade over time into increasingly dull shades of gray. But this fear is extinguished forever when the final, poignant truth about Sam Shoogey becomes known, a moment too late. (Fall 2005 Selection).
Barnes and Noble - Fall, 2005
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"In this meditation on an unremarkable Baltimore barrister and his friendship with a shady charmer named Sam Shoogey, Kun ... has created the fictional equivalent of Russian nesting dolls: multiple quirky little stories inside of bigger stories."
Atlanta Magazine - August, 2005
Baltimore Magazine has selected You Poor Monster as the Best Novel of 2005 in its August "Best of Baltimore" issue.
Set lovingly in Baltimore, Michael Kun's "You Poor Monster" is chock full of interesting characters, wry and witty prose, and an intriguing premise: If you know that a wickedly good storyteller is spinning a fantastic yarn, is it still a lie? A Hopkins grad, Kun uses endnotes to craft a subplot that both enriches the narrative and underscores his premise.
Baltimore Magazine - August, 2005
Funny, sad and thought-provoking, Michael Kun's "You Poor Monster" could take a few days to read since you'll probably put down the book to consider the question "Is a lie really a lie if you know it's untrue, or is it just a story?" Baltimore lawyer Ham Ashe meets Sam Shoogey soon after moving to Mount Washington and from the beginning, Shoogey proves himself to be both charismatic and repulsive. To his wife's chagrin, he decides to serve as Shooogey's divorce lawyer and gets involved in Shoogey's adventures when he should be at work or at home with his family. When Shoogey's many tales are revealed as fabrications, Ham has to decide how to reconcile his affection for his friend with his distasse for lies.
Baltimore Style Magazine - July/August, 2005
This captivating, annoying, fascinating, frustrating, messy, laugh-out-loud tragedy by Baltimorean Michael Kun is all over the map - of Baltimore, of the 20th century, of the interior landscape of its narrator, attorney Hamilton Ashe, and his slimy, sublime, seductive client, Sam Shoogey, inveterate tale-spinner and improbable liar. Shoogey is as despicable as he is inviting. Ashe is pendantic - and full of honest yearning. How their lives intersect in a Maryland cul-de-sac is both hilarious and telling. Like Cheever on acid, Kun takes his readers into a complex, multi-layered story that may or may not be the truth in which Shoogey, a war veteran, football hero and murderer in the throes of a nasty divorce may or may not get his comeuppance. Kun has a lust for excess which threatens to undermine the story (most notably in the endnotes), but in Shoogey, he serves up a character we can sink our literary teeth into. A fine, fun read.
Baltimore Sun - June 19, 2005
"For those who lived in Maryland, for those who knew how to crack open a crab and find the juiciest meat within its claws (twist, twist, careful now, pull, gentle, pull), for those who knew the squawk of a seagull watching you as you worked, Shoogey needed no more of an introduction than Elvis Presley." Meet Sam Shoogey, storyteller, liar, sweetheart. Is he a novelist or isn't he? Did he play football at the University of Maryland? Did he ever fight King Gilmore? Did he shoot seven men on the battlefield, one of them in the nose, "turning their bodies to fertilizer and their thoughts to pure blue air?" You want to believe him because you love him, this man whose motto is Sic biscuitis disintegrat, or "That's the way the cookie crumbles." It's the Great American Dilemma in novel form - where it can't hurt anybody, right? (Lie to us. Set our imaginations wandering and our souls free from Calvinist moralizing, and we will believe you.) You won't forget him. "Shoogey was Shoogey, like Dillinger was Dillinger, Picasso Picasso, Gandhi Gandhi. But mostly Dillinger Dillinger."
Los Angeles Times - June 12, 2005
... Kun is an excellent storyteller, and his book finds a way to bring levity to lies, infidelity and murder. Kun brings reades into his story, making them feel part of an inside joke....
Albuquerque Journal - June 12, 2005
Maybe You Read It In City Paper 12 Years Ago, But Michael Kun's Retooled Novel You Poor Monster Is Leaner, Meaner, And Better Than Before. And He'll Be The First To Say So.
Michael Kun isn't shy about playing favorites. As he describes it: 'Authors will often tell you that, just as they do not have favorites among their children, they do not have favorites among their books. This is complete nonsense. Get a few drinks in them, and every writer I know will finally admit which book is his favorite. You don't need to ply me with alcohol. I'll tell you flat-out, without hesitation, that "You Poor Monster" is my favorite.'
Longtime City Paper readers have already read Kun's new book You Poor Monster, published by Macadam/Cage this month. More accurately, they've read Our Poor Napoleon, a pre-hominid version of Monster that CP printed in 36 serialized installments in 1993. Kun, whose jovial voice matches his jolly "about the author" photo perfectly, sees little relation between the book that became the apple of his literary eye and its hulking 600-page-plus ancestor....
Baltimore City Paper - June 8, 2005
Michael Kun entertains some fairly profound questions in his deft and zany little novel, "You Poor Monster", even if he never arrives at any satisfying answers. Ordinary-guy lawyer Hamilton Ashe is awakened one night by a charming, disheveled neighbor requesting a scotch and soda and help with his divorce. This is Sam Shoogey, novelist. Or is it Sam Shoogey, insurance salesman? Or is this epic talker - 'He was cheerful, and he was grave, and he moved from one to the other with amphibious ease' - a pathological liar? Kun never quite manages to make you care, but he makes you think: 'The lives of. . .everyone we will ever meet are essentially unknowable. All we can ever know about them are the stories they tell us, and if those stories aren't true, what then? What then?' Grade: B+
Entertainment Weekly - May 30, 2005
Michael Kun is one of our favorite writers, and not just because he's contributed two fiction pieces to our pages (see April and October, 2004). Quite the opposite: We sought him out because we'd found his novel The Locklear Letters gut-bustingly hilarious.
In his new effort, Kun switches gears, proving his worth as a classic storyteller as he weaves a tale about up-and-down friendship, the nature of truth ("Is a lie a lie if you know it's untrue, or is it just a story?"), and guilt. What's so compelling is that, although the reader has to question the validity of just about everything that comes out of the characters' mouths, he is increasingly confident that Kun is honestly and objectively describing the nuances of human nature and relationships - between neighbors, between husband and wife, between father and daughter. You Poor Monster is ultimately a sad, sweet novel that lowers an extra boom near the conclusion. Note: Don't skip the endnotes or you'll miss a whole other level.
Indy Men's Magazine - June, 2005
This is a very cleverly constructed novel by a writer best known for his first book, "A Thousand Benjamins" (1990). Ham Ashe is a workaholic who becomes enamored of his new Baltimore neighbor, Sam Shoogey, a raconteur, author, and former war hero. Ham is a corporate lawyer, but Sam inveigles Ham into representing him in his nasty divorce. So starts a strange, sometimes surreal relationship as Ham watches Sam slowly slide into complete despair and dissolution. All of Sam's adventures, which he endlessly recounts, are soon cast into doubt as Ham discovers the truth about Sam's background and experiences. Meanwhile, Ham himself proves to be an unreliable narrator as his story of his happy marriage and solid relationship with his daughters is slowly but surely undermined by the bitter and cryptic endnotes. Kun wildly shifts the tone of his brainteaser of a novel from comic to pathetic to near tragic, and readers may have a hard time keeping up with him; but he also has some pointed things to say about outward appearances and the role of self-deception.
Booklist - May 15, 2005
A Baltimore lawyer acquires an engaging but erratic raconteur for a client in Kun's funny, mazy third novel (after "My Wife and My Dead Wife"). When corporate lawyer Hamilton "Ham" Ashe takes on his neighbor Sam Shoogey's divorce case (against his better judgment), it's the beginning of a bizarre friendship. Shoogey is a liar extraordinaire-he regales Ham with stories of killing seven men during an unspecified war, sleeping with 150 women, writing lots of books, being a college football star and the like-and Ham finds him fascinating, even if Ham's wife (the "old grapefruit," Shoogey calls her) disapproves. The story of their improbable friendship lies at the heart of Kun's book-just who is Shoogey? And is anything he says true? - which delicately contrasts Ashe's very real family life and Shoogey's wild fantasy existence. While comedy sits on the surface of the narrative, a poignancy that borders on tragedy lies beneath in a novel that "tells the truth and lies in the same voice."
Publisher's Weekly
Think of the biggest liar you've ever known, a truly repulsive human, and imagine what it would require to feel compassion for him.
In "The Locklear Letters" (2003), Kun showed that he could take a truly pathetic specimen of a person -- in that case, a compulsive writer of astonishingly clueless fan letters to the titular actress -- and find the honest spark within him without resorting to fakery or sentimental machinations. In this more ambitious fiction, the central piece of sad-sackery is a more complex creation, and the author makes him a near-epic character. Sam Shoogey likes to regale next-door neighbor and narrator Hamilton (Ham) Ashe with stories that are as wonderfully dramatic as they are probably untrue. The book opens with a real corker that we soon learn Sam tells at every conceivable opportunity: about the time he killed a man in "the war" (unspecified) and then years later got a visit from the fellow soldier whose life he had saved, who promptly borrowed money from him. This gem of hardnosed poetry and heartache understandably enthralls ham, a lawyer who barely supports his wife and child by working ridiculous hours. It turns out that Sam is not only a fantastic raconteur but also a mystery writer and lover of women who needs Ham's help with a little divorce problem he is having. Thus begins their odd friendship, which sprawls through this lengthy but breezy text and starts to unravel in strange circumstances before it has a chance to truly blossom. Kun manages to make Ham's life, with its routines and lassitude, seem just as engaging as Sam's speedy, high-octane antics; he conveys just as much feeling for moments of quiet familial grace as he does for comic extravaganzas. When Sam's house of cards begins to collapse, "You Poor Monster" becomes sadder and grows more resonant as a result.
A refreshingly humane comedy about the lies people tell themselves -- and others -- just to survive.
Kirkus Reviews April 15, 2005.