Wanders aimlessly from subject to subject.Could not establish affection for any of the characters.

First, the amazon.com review of this book contains two errors. The American spin doctors were hired by Hannibal's opponent, not by Hannibal. And, although Hannibal certainly likes his Brown Death and "strong coffee," I would hardly call him a "hopeless drunk."

Although I was less interested in Eggert's past affairs than the author seemed to be, I really enjoyed this book. Set in the fictitious island nation of Freeland, it is in many ways a good metaphor for politics in small U.S. states and cities and for the sad struggle against the popular uniculture many small traditional cultures face. The book is anything but sad, however. Lots of wit and humor. Rut (Freelandic for Ruth) is one of the more appealing female characters I've read. Some nice nods to Icelandic Nobel laureate Haldor Laxness (author of my favorite novel of all time, Independent People, for which Leithauser wrote an intro to the new English-language printing).

Highly recommended.

I note with despair that most of the reviews for this book thus far are wholly neglectful of the most charming qualities of "Friends of Freeland." The book chugs along on a number of levels: political satire, character portrait, humour. I first came across this book at a reading at Toronto's Harbourfront Reading Series, where Leithauser read the first two chapters. I had never heard of Leithauser before, but by halfway through the first chapter, I decided I was going to buy the book. Got it signed, too. I was absolutely delighted with the rest of the book when I got it home, and I recently read it a second time. It was just as wonderful. How many books can you say that about? While it is true that parts of the novel dwell on the less appealing aspects of the narrator's life and character, Leithauser's brilliant use of the first person (and occasional flights into the ironic third) carry it off magnificently. If you can't care about these characters, you're simply not hearing what they have to say. Ranks among my three all-time favourite books.

This book was mentioned in the New York Times book reviews, so I bought it and read it. I was very disappointed. His depiction of chess players was juvenile (take that everyway possible). The author has tons of academic credentials, but he is a terrible novelist.

"Hence" is a book that's sunk out of sight over the last few years, which is sad. People interested in chess or artificial intelligence (two of the book's putative subjects) have sometimes been disappointed in it. But I found it weirdly readable and very memorable, written in a style reminiscent of Nabokov. The various hints, clues, and word games scattered through the book add to that comparison. The strange narrative voice of Garner Briggs is a real achievement. I don't know if Leithauser has produced anything else written in this way, or if he's even interested in doing so again, but I'm certainly glad he wrote this.

Brad Leithauser is the worst poet I've read in some time. Although there are many more carelessly self-indulgent poets writing, Leithauser is amazingly self-indulgent in terms of content: his poems have no purpose, not even to delight, and they seem simply smug when they do bother to adopt a tone. Thomas M Disch called Leithauser the prom king of American poetry--apparently because of Leithauser's earlier self-aggrandizing--but that description gives Leithauser the advantage of being interesting, which the poems in this book definitely are not.

When Leithauser's first book of poems, Hundreds of Fireflies, came out, many readers of poetry were delighted. His was a truly remarkable first volume of poems. But with each successive volume of poems, his work gets worse. How boring to read a book of poems you know must have bored the poet himself. He needs a subject matter that he can feel excited about because he is obviously not excited and his poems are all the more dull for it. A fine example of how all the form in the world, no matter how well the poet can command it, will not make bad poems interesting. Save your money and read this one, if interested, at the library.

In a time when there a quite a few poets labeled as Formalist who are too incompetent even to write an effective iambic pentameter line or to avoid pop-song rhymes ("The girl is MINE / I think about her all the TIME"), Leithauser's book (clearly his best) is refreshing. Leithauser has been accused of lacking important subject matter, but anyone who says that after reading the brilliant poem "Play" (where a shift from consonance rhyming to full rhyming mimics a subject-matter shift from stillness to speed) and the powerful title poem must have a very narrow definition of "important." Ignore the incompetent Yusef Komunyakaa and the banal Edward Hirsch and the PC-to-the-point-of-self-parody Adrienne Rich and the cutesy-poo Billy Collins: read this book instead.