The Instructions by Adam Levine - B

This is a tough blog entry for me.  Possibly the toughest that I have posted.  Why?  Because I wanted to love this novel.  This behemoth of a novel.  This dictionary (as several people called it when seeing me carrying it) of a novel.

100 pages in, I thought the novel was brilliant.  200 pages in, I thought the novel would be in the running to become my favorite all-time book.  600 pages in, I was still loving it.

Fact is, I didn’t love the last 300+ pages.  I wanted to, I really did.  As my enthusiasm for the book waned in those last 300+ pages, I went through all five stages of grief:

• Denial:  “This novel is still really really good.”
• Anger:  “No.  No.  Noooooooooooooooo!”
• Bargaining:  “OK.  If just this happens, I’ll continue to love this novel unconditionally.”
• Depression:  “What a letdown.  I’m really sad.”
• Acceptance:  “It’s ok.  It’s ok.”

The Instructions purports to be scripture written by the protagonist, Gurion Maccabee, and tells the story of how Maccabee, who is at least a child prodigy and at most the messiah (Gurion is also the narrator so the theme of how reliable he is at telling his own story is only one of many themes) recruits allies and tries to cripple what he sees as an unjust and unfair school system.  All of the action takes place in a four-day period.

Maccabee is Jewish, and many of the themes and references in the novel are Jewish-related.  I suppose that you could call The Instructions “Jewish fiction,” and I want to make sure that if you commit to this novel, you are not turned off by my failure to highlight this.

Despite the fact that I didn’t love the last quarter of the novel, I greatly enjoyed this read.  I’d almost have to do so to work my way through 1,030 pages.  Let me break this down:

• The Good:  Listen, Adam Levine is a phenomenal writer.  Rich, dense language.  Many times, I found myself doubling back and being grateful for doing so because I would have missed something.  A large part of me wanted to start the novel all over again because I know that I missed things.  I also know that much of the novel was “over my head.”  There’s plenty that I missed, and I would have liked to have read this novel in graduate school so that I could spend a couple of months studying it.  Great characters that will stick with you.  Many thought-provoking themes.
• The Bad:  I’ve got kids these kids’ ages, and I can buy one child prodigy (Gurion), but not only are most of these kids too smart for their ages, they’re wise well beyond their years.  [As indicated above, I have a real narrator reliability issue here.  I think that, on many levels, that’s part of the point of the novel, but to disregard the narrator’s reliability in total is to trivialize 1,030 pages of text.  So I can’t do that, either.]  If you’re looking for plot development (there is plenty of character development), you don’t get a whole lot until the last “act.”  Remember, the “action” takes place over a four day period.  Literary, religious and cultural references are strewn throughout, and I have no idea whether I caught 10%, 25%, 50% or 90% of them—I clearly didn’t catch 100%.  You have to be very well-read to catch them all.

The bottom line is that there is a tremendous amount here.  In the end, I asked myself, “Was it worth it?  Was it worth the time investment?”  For me, unquestionably yes.  I’m glad that I committed to The Instructions.

Live long, read and prosper.  We’ll leave the lights on for you.