Larry's Kidney by Daniel Asa Rose (Book Review)

With Larry's Kidney, author Daniel Asa Rose hits the ball hard and deep, but ultimately foul.

The premise of a man and his cousin traveling to China to try and obtain a kidney for a transplant the uncle desperately needs is great and the setup draws you in at the start. But the story didn't maintain momentum or keep my interest, in large part because, though the book is a true story, it felt like neither memoir nor fiction. I'm not sure why. The events seemed plausible but the characters spoke and acted at really odd angles. They didn't come across as real to me, and certainly didn't capture my sympathy. However, they didn't read like fictional characters either. Perhaps the problem is with me and that I've read too many memoirs that are so fabricated and scripted that my sense of a real person in a memoir is blurred and really off.

In any case, the book never come together for me.

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