Ingenious ... A less cloistered book [than Last Resort], with bigger, more universal themes. Lipstein trades the faintly antique unease of literary reputation for the all-too-current ones of money and technology. You root for its thinky, troubled hero, even while you enjoy watching him sweat ... Not since Jonathan Safran Foer’s Eating Animals has a Brooklyn writer made so plain a case for greater sensitivity to the natural world. And The Vegan, a pig in a blanket of irony, subversion and humor, is much easier to swallow.
It's a widely accepted truth that hedge-fund protagonists generally aren't interesting. They're too rich for their problems to resonate. Their actual job is often nebulous and complicated and therefore boring. They're almost impossible to make sympathetic. Or, alternatively, they're cartoon villains. But Andrew Lipstein's effort in The Vegan is fresh and inventive ... In Lipstein's sophomore effort he achieves the difficult feat of realistically animating a hedge fund manager who talks and moves as real hedge fund managers do, or might, but who is compelling and not overly alienating ... Lipstein achieves another feat with his descriptions of financial-world machinations — they're lucid and immediate, and the obscene wealth they throw off is refreshingly obscene — appealing, but lurid ... The writing is lilting, grandiose, dense, run-ons full of action and metaphor. It reads like if Martin Amis wrote Money about a more distinguished salesman or, at times, as an F. Scott Fitzgerald-esque commentary on the violence of class. In only a few overwrought moments did it spill past the point of good taste.
Along the way, Lipstein...lets loose some overwrought metaphors...But his setup also earns him the opportunity to riff on the progression of language alongside the progression of capital, a twined overgrowth. If satirizing a wannabe tech mogul feels like low-hanging fruit for some readers, Lipstein at least keeps the growing genre fresh.
Herschel’s motormouth narration and a compressed time frame make this a frantic, almost hysterically told story, which has the effect of muddling rather than sharpening its moral concerns. It’s not clear to me, at least, how involuntary manslaughter, stock-market rigging and meat-eating are at all related. But The Vegan races along so breathlessly that you hardly have time to question just what on earth is going on.
Curious ... Has the makings of an ambitiously conceived, 10-course tasting menu, but by the end of it, it left me feeling hungry and confused. Like foie gras or veal, I suspect that it won’t be to everyone’s taste.
For all the eloquent monologues, it sometimes feels as though Lipstein shoves Herschel into scenes that don’t feel natural ... On the other hand, when Herschel finally loses control of his own narrative, Lipstein cleverly shows this dissociation by switching from first to third person, with the reader understanding that it is Herschel narrating his own bad behavior (not just Lipstein writing it). The bigger issue is Lipstein’s choice of targets...It’s easy to skewer empty strivers, and it definitely brings satisfaction to readers to see them get their comeuppance. But that’s different than writing a fully successful novel; creating a compelling story around such a ruthless capitalist and unpleasant mess of a man is a tricky business ... Lipstein pushes his story at a propulsive clip and gives us plenty to think about, like the idea of whether an accident can also be somebody’s fault. But Herschel is the book’s only fully fleshed out character, and since he’s not only tough to stomach but an empty soul, The Vegan, for all its flavorful scenes, ultimately leaves you wishing for a little more red meat.
Engrossing ... Though the denouement is a little rushed, there’s genuine suspense in Lipstein’s meaty novel of ideas. This is well worth the investment.
This new novel uses juxtaposition to surprising effect: philosophy mixes with financial thriller, high capitalism with animalia. But things are never as dissimilar as they first seem—sometimes, the book says, when our lives and beliefs bend so far, they can ultimately make a full circle. A topsy-turvy investigation of that most disorienting question: What does it mean to be a good person?
