Sign up for our newsletters to receive our Best of 2024 ezine!

BookBrowse Reviews This Is How It Really Sounds by Stuart Archer Cohen

Summary |  Excerpt |  Reviews |  Beyond the book |  Read-Alikes |  Genres & Themes |  Author Bio

This Is How It Really Sounds by Stuart Archer Cohen

This Is How It Really Sounds

by Stuart Archer Cohen
  • BookBrowse Review:
  • Critics' Consensus (4):
  • First Published:
  • Apr 21, 2015, 368 pages
  • Paperback:
  • Apr 2016, 368 pages
  • Rate this book

About This Book

Reviews

BookBrowse:


A novel where the worlds of wealth, pop-culture celebrity, and physical prowess collide in a realm that is shared between three men, each in search of his Other Life.
This review is available to non-members for a limited time. For access to our digital magazine, free books,and other benefits, become a member today.

This is the story of three Pete Harringtons.

The first Pete Harrington is like Richie Rich, a poor little rich boy. He's living the good life in Shanghai sitting on a pretty pile of cash — three hundred million dollars he made from his hedge-fund trading firm, Crossroads Partners, before the Great Recession brought things tumbling down.

On the other hand, the second Pete Harrington is a rich little poor boy. Loaded with talent, he is an extreme skier who stands on the cusp of striking it big but doesn't have much in terms of material wealth.

The third Pete Harrington is a mix of both. Once upon a time, he was a huge pop sensation but now he is a washed-out drug addict with a girl on each arm, hoping to rest on his past glory and equally important, his money.

One thread, above all, unifies these characters: each Pete Harrington is disgruntled with the cards he has been dealt and often wants out. This grass-is-greener-on-the-other-side approach to the everyday is no mild mid-life crisis that can be easily dismissed. It is strong enough for the Pete Harringtons to act on their impulses and take risks, to prove to at least their own selves that their lives still have some excitement and spontaneity.

If much of the novel sounds like a Debbie Downer, rest assured that it is not. Author Stuart Archer Cohen infuses the narrative with enough hijinks and adrenaline-loaded sequences to keep the reader hooked. Even if the high-wire act of juggling three different Pete Harringtons might seem like a bit much, Cohen pulls it off with aplomb – carving specific quirks and character traits, enough for each to be instantly recognizable, yet distinct from the other two.

Robert Frost might have made famous the notion of "The Road Not Taken," but most human beings have had at least a mild case of the "Pete Harringtons." In essence, the book's fundamental theme — of missed opportunities and accompanying regret — does not feel novel. Couched as it is in Cohen's fast-paced writing, it sometimes even comes across as a tad glib. "It's so simple!", banker Pete Harrington's Chinese tutor tells him while in Shanghai. "You keep looking for the Other Life. But your own life is the other life." In essence, this central moral of the story is no profound revelation. Besides, as Cohen expertly shows, fate plays as much of a role in his characters' outcomes, as conscious choice.

If Cohen's novel might not be the perfect vehicle to tease out the subtle differences between destiny and impulse, or between happiness and contentment, it is nevertheless a finely tuned instrument where the Pete Harringtons' paths intersect in unexpected ways. Cohen also expertly uses recurring motifs — a warm, welcoming home and even a magazine advertisement — to unite his stories and transport readers seamlessly from one character to the other. By setting such everyday motifs in different lives and different situations, (the magazine ad, for example, shows up both in Shanghai and Alaska), the reader is left to connect the dots — to imagine not just the novel's three central characters but to adopt a wide-angle perspective and marvel at the many seemingly banal facets that make up each special life. The way that Cohen so fluidly places this responsibility on the reader's shoulder is his biggest strength and the novel's most soulful note.

The cinematic writing and fast-paced plot make This Is How It Really Sounds a great beach read and should work well as basis for a blockbuster movie too.

Reviewed by Poornima Apte

This review was originally published in The BookBrowse Review in June 2015, and has been updated for the April 2016 edition. Click here to go to this issue.

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $45 for 12 months or $15 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Beyond the Book:
  Extreme Skiing

Read-Alikes

Read-Alikes Full readalike results are for members only

If you liked This Is How It Really Sounds, try these:

  • Tuesday Nights in 1980 jacket

    Tuesday Nights in 1980

    by Molly Prentiss

    Published 2017

    About This book

    An intoxicating and transcendent debut novel that follows a critic, an artist, and their shared muse as they find their way - and ultimately collide - amid the ever-evolving New York City art scene of the 1980s.

  • The Prize jacket

    The Prize

    by Jill Bialosky

    Published 2016

    About This book

    "Like Edward feels upon discovering a transcendent piece of art, this book finds that little opening at the edge of your soul and seeps in."

We have 7 read-alikes for This Is How It Really Sounds, but non-members are limited to two results. To see the complete list of this book's read-alikes, you need to be a member.
Search read-alikes
How we choose read-alikes

Top Picks

  • Book Jacket: Model Home
    Model Home
    by Rivers Solomon
    Rivers Solomon's novel Model Home opens with a chilling and mesmerizing line: "Maybe my mother is ...
  • Book Jacket
    The Frozen River
    by Ariel Lawhon
    "I cannot say why it is so important that I make this daily record. Perhaps because I have been ...
  • Book Jacket
    Prophet Song
    by Paul Lynch
    Paul Lynch's 2023 Booker Prize–winning Prophet Song is a speedboat of a novel that hurtles...
  • Book Jacket: The Love Elixir of Augusta Stern
    The Love Elixir of Augusta Stern
    by Lynda Cohen Loigman
    Lynda Cohen Loigman's delightful novel The Love Elixir of Augusta Stern opens in 1987. The titular ...

BookBrowse Book Club

Book Jacket
In Our Midst
by Nancy Jensen
In Our Midst follows a German immigrant family’s fight for freedom after their internment post–Pearl Harbor.
Book Jacket
The Rose Arbor
by Rhys Bowen
An investigation into a girl's disappearance uncovers a mystery dating back to World War II in a haunting novel of suspense.
Who Said...

They say that in the end truth will triumph, but it's a lie.

Click Here to find out who said this, as well as discovering other famous literary quotes!

Wordplay

Big Holiday Wordplay 2024

Enter Now

Your guide toexceptional          books

BookBrowse seeks out and recommends the best in contemporary fiction and nonfiction—books that not only engage and entertain but also deepen our understanding of ourselves and the world around us.