BOOKS:

THE
MAN IN MY BASEMENT By Walter Mosley

Right away when Mosley tells me that Lainie, the loan officer in his novel The Man in My Basement, has a bagged lunch every day at 12:30 I know he's full of shit.
This the kind of Disney cartoon character, with
the kind of cute quirk, that only exists in lazy imaginations. There
is nothing real here, no footing in flesh. Walter Mosley knows nobody like this. The first three chapters weren't bad, they weren't that good either though. It's clear that he's setting something up, but he has yet to make me interested in finding out what it is. It starts with the main character living alone and struck a chord because he got it mostly right, I know this because I live alone. But he is too easy with it, too independent. Too secure. Anybody with enough of a thought-life to tell a novel-length story (The Man in My Basement is written in the first person) would not be this easy with solitude.