The Portable Veblen

Locations
Call Number: Fiction / McKenzie, Elizabeth, Adult Book / Fiction / General / McKenzie, Elizabeth
On Shelf At: Downtown Library, Malletts Creek Branch

Location & Checkout Length	Call Number	Checkout Length	Item Status
Downtown 2nd Floor 4-week checkout	Fiction / McKenzie, Elizabeth	4-week checkout	On Shelf
Downtown 2nd Floor 4-week checkout	Fiction / McKenzie, Elizabeth	4-week checkout	On Shelf
Malletts Adult Books 4-week checkout	Adult Book / Fiction / General / McKenzie, Elizabeth	4-week checkout	On Shelf
Westgate Adult Books 4-week checkout	Adult Book / Fiction / General / McKenzie, Elizabeth	4-week checkout	Due 05-05-2024

"A young couple on the brink of marriage--the charming Veblen and her fiancé Paul, a brilliant neurologist--find their engagement in danger of collapse. Along the way they weather everything from each other's dysfunctional families, to the attentions of a seductive pharmaceutical heiress, to an intimate tête-à-tête with a very charismatic squirrel. Veblen (named after the iconoclastic economist Thorstein Veblen, who coined the term "conspicuous consumption") is one of the most refreshing heroines in recent fiction. Not quite liberated from the burdens of her hypochondriac, narcissistic mother and her institutionalized father, Veblen is an amateur translator and "freelance self"; in other words, she's adrift. Meanwhile, Paul--the product of good hippies who were bad parents--finds his ambition soaring. His medical research has led to the development of a device to help minimize battlefield brain trauma--an invention that gets him swept up in a high-stakes deal with the Department of Defense, a Bizarro World that McKenzie satirizes with granular specificity"-- Provided by publisher.

REVIEWS & SUMMARIES

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COMMUNITY REVIEWS

quirky, amusing, and a little odd submitted by 21621031390949 on June 23, 2017, 10:28pm What a funny little book. I started out listening to the audio version - which I would not recommend -and didn't really like it much. Then I switched to reading the hard copy and was quickly drawn in. The characters are, uh, quirky, but the more I got to know them, the more real they seemed. I could definitely see realities in them. In fact, this was the best portrayal of my own mother I've ever seen.

At any rate it's a fun love and relationship story that includes hippies and academics and Big Pharma and veterans, with a little philosophy thrown in, and.....squirrels!

Quirky submitted by emjane on August 16, 2017, 8:48pm There is no better word to describe this book than quirky. Despite not feeling connected with any character, I had to keep reading just to figure out how I felt about the book.

Give it 30 pages -- if you hate it, you won't like it more. If you love it, you'll keep loving it. And if you're like me, and don't know how you feel, go along for the ride and take in the quirk.