Are you a puppy dog, a cat, a canary or a goldfish? This is just one of the introspective questions you may find yourself asking as you read Andy Andrews' The Noticer: Sometimes, all a person needs is a little perspective (Hardcover $12.23; Kindle
$9.99; Audio CD
$15.63).In The Noticer, Andrews, bestselling author of The Traveler's Gift (Paperback
$10.19; Kindle
$9.99), tells the (purported) true story of how he discovered the seven principals revealed in his earlier books. Broke, lonely and homeless, depressed and feeling hopeless, he is approached by an itinerant philosopher named Jones ("not Mr. Jones ... just Jones"), who describes himself as "a noticer" and who advises him that all his problems are simply a matter of perspective. Starting with a request to "move into the light," advice that he ask himself each day what things about himself other would want him to change and a crash course in biographies of individuals who had risen above their humble beginnings and gone on to do great things, he gradually sees his life change, developing his seven principals, getting married, having children and building his career as an author and inspirational speaker. Twenty five years later, Jones is back in town and changing the lives of many others. All have different problems and yet have the same problem, according to Jones: a lack of perspective. Jones turns up at a critical moment in each person's life, knows their name and most secret problems and deals out advice that saves the day. A marriage on the rocks is saved by a realization that the two have different ideas on how love is expressed (puppies and goldfish can co-exist, but they need to learn new dialects of love in order to speak to each other). Teens just exploring dating get advice on how to find someone they might want to spend the rest of their life with (and why they should be thinking about that and not just dating those they are attracted to with no thoughts of the futures).
Whether the person he speaks to is suicidal, settling in to mark time until death, doing just enough to get buy and cheating those around them, Jones (or Garcia or Chen, depending on who he talks to) is able to show them how to change their perspective in order to find a purpose or direction for the rest of their lives.
Overall, I enjoyed the book and it's a quick, light read (embracing it's lessons and changing your life would be the difficult and lengthy part). However, having the main protaganist shift racial features as you concentrate on different ethnic names, keeping the same physical appearance not just for the 25 year span of the book, but also for the lifetimes of several older characters, as well as being both omniscent and able to disappear into thin air simply doesn't jive with the claim of a true story at the end of the first chapter. Unless perhaps the author has a slightly warped perception of reality, one not shared with most others on the planet (at least the more sober and sane ones). It also doesn't add to the story, as a nice parable and story of a messenger of god is colored by the claim. I'd recommend the book, but also that you skip pages 19 and 20 when you do (it's easy enough to forget that the author's name is the same as that of the main narrator, as it is both seldom used and he isn't present for a large part of the story,which truly is about Jones and the lessons he imparts to those whose lives he touches).
