Review: The Soloist by Steve Lopez

The Soloist by Steve Lopez

This book was recently made into a movie, which I have not yet seen, but I can't imagine that it comes close to telling as much of the story, as honestly, as this book does.

Mr. Lopez initially meets the homeless Cello / Violin player on the streets of Southern California. Mr Lopez is a newspaper columnist and in Nathanial Ayers he sees a column (or three). Out of his own selfish need he takes the time to get to know this man and learn why he is on the street. How can a man who is so obviously talented be living on the streets? Would could have happened to him to bring him there? These are the questions that Mr Lopez sets out to discover. In doing so, he decides to take on the mission of trying to help Mr Ayers, a mission he admittedly wishes would be done soon. Mr Lopez is brutally honest in telling this story of what he does in his attempts to help this man. Through his own selfish need to have something to write about and his both selfish and unselfish attempts to help Mr Ayers, he ends up helping many more by bringing the plight of the homeless in LA to the forefront of everyone's mind, including that of the local government.

The book starts off wonderfully as he tells this story, in addition to Mr Ayers story, we learn about the stories of others who are also homeless, and the state of homelessness, in general. How did it get to the point that so many are living on the streets, and why can't we do more about it. Unfortunately, about 2/3 of the way through the book, it seems that the book becomes much like Mr Lopez initial need to fix Mr Ayers, a project he wishes would be over soon. The book changes tone and seems to become repetitive. Information we've already learned about Mr Ayers is repeated and sometimes the story becomes jumbled and I wasn't sure if bits of the story he was telling were happening at the same time. By the time the book ended, I too was ready for this project to be over. But, I was left wondering about a few things. What did become of Mr Ayers? Granted this story has not truly ended yet, so we won't know the overall outcome until after he dies. Did Mr Lopez feel that he had really helped or fixed Mr Ayers? And did he continue the friendship after the project was over? Because although Mr Lopez called Mr Ayers his friend, I never really got the feeling that he was ever more to him than a project that he would do whatever needed to be done in order to see through to the end.


Next Book: My Sister's Keeper: A Novel by Jodi Picoult