The protagonist, Oppen Porter, is fully realized and we are quickly pulled into his way of seeing the world. One of the best books of the year, and a triumph of first-person narration. But Oppen is the kind of character even I couldn't help but love. I can read a book about an asshole and love it just as much as something with "people to root for" or whatever. The short version of the story is that I don't need it to enjoy a book. I always have a thing about "likeability" with regards fictional characters. Oppen Porter, the narrator of Panorama City, is so endearing, so charming that by page five, you'll be completely engrossed. So in lieu of something more meaningful, let me just say that I defy you not to like this book. The short vers I have been meaning to write a long review of this book, because I think there's a lot in it to pull out and examine, but I am a busy man, and it doesn't look like that's going to happen. I have been meaning to write a long review of this book, because I think there's a lot in it to pull out and examine, but I am a busy man, and it doesn't look like that's going to happen. Disarmingly funny and surreptitiously moving, Panorama City makes us see the world, and our place in it, with new eyes. Oppen Porter is "an American original" (Stewart O'Nan) for whom finding one's own way is both a delightful art and a painstaking science. Ping-ponging between his watchful and sharp-tongued aunt and an outlaw philosopher with the face "of a newly hatched crocodile," Oppen finds himself constantly in the sights of people who believe that their way is the only way for him. Written in an astonishingly charming and wise voice, Oppen’s account traces forty days and nights navigating the fast food joints, storefront churches, and home-office psychologists of the San Fernando Valley. From his deathbed*, 28-year-old Oppen Porter-an open-hearted, bicycle-riding, binocular-toting, self-described "slow absorber"-unspools into a cassette recorder a tale of self-determination, from "village idiot" to "man of the world," With its blend of fool’s wisdom and deeply felt humanity, Panorama City is heir to Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead and Steve Martin’s The Jerk.įrom his deathbed*, 28-year-old Oppen Porter-an open-hearted, bicycle-riding, binocular-toting, self-described "slow absorber"-unspools into a cassette recorder a tale of self-determination, from "village idiot" to "man of the world," for the benefit of his unborn son.
With its blend of fool’s wisdom and deeply felt humanity, Panorama City is heir to Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead and Steve Martin’s The Jerk.
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