Vincent Nolan wants to be a changed man. Once a Neo-Nazi and a self-described "punk storm-trooper rapist," Vincent is looking for redemption in the eyes of Meyer Maslow, a Holocaust survivor. I didn't quite believe the situation. Why wouldn't Maslow be more suspicious of Nolan? How does he trust this guy wants to change just...like...that? Is he really A Changed Man? How has Vincent become a moral hero overnight? On the flip side, I am also suspicious that no one at Brotherhood Watch would be worried for Vincent's safety...if he really is a changed man. He just left a very dangerous, cult-like organization. Think gangs. Wouldn't ARM want retaliation? Wouldn't Vincent's cousin be looking for him after Vincent stole his truck, prescription meds, and Soldier of Fortune magazine, and then left his little hate club?
The only parts I found believable were the times when someone was jealous of someone else (and this happens a lot): Brotherhood Watch donation coordinator, Bonny, was jealous of her ex-husband's new wife (very appropriate) and she was jealous of her ex-husband's importance in society (As a cardiologist, he saves lives. What does she do?); Maslow was jealous of Elie Wiesel's "Holocaust" fame, then he was jealous of Vincent's "changed man" fame; Vincent was jealous of the Iranian prisoner's story getting more attention than his own transformation and he was also jealous of Timothy McVeigh's limelight. Yes, that Timothy McVeigh. Threaded through A Changed Man is the real-life drama of the Oklahoma City bombing and the subsequent execution of McVeigh. It allows Prose to show both sides of a tragedy. The Jews were ecstatic when McVeigh was put to death while the neo-Nazis mourned and honored their hero. As an aside, Prose made Vincent look a lot like McVeigh for added creepville.
Overall, A Changed Man might be heavy on subject (Holocaust survivor, neo-Nazis, etc.) but super light on drama complete with a Hallmark-like ending. ( )

Is Vincent Nolan too good to be true? Meyer Maslow and Bonnie Kalen of World Brotherhood Watch, a human rights foundation believe he is sincere. And so begins a seriously funny adventure of presenting a changed man to the public and more importantly to donors.

Prose is a pro at knowing how to show Meyer, Bonnie and Vincent, and their strengths and weaknesses developing and changing in response to their individual lives, and because of the the synergy between the three of them.

Cute ending could be a bit stronger.

I enjoyed this entertaining and light read about a serious topic.

Can people change for the better? Can their experience help others change for the better? How do we find people who are ready to change, and how do we fully utilize them? Can we trust them? ( )

A reformed skinhead presents himself at the front door of a foundation run by a Holocaust survivor, offering himself up as a “changed man” who wants to help others like him. What’s the catch? I wondered, naturally. But it turns out there is no catch. Certainly, the skinhead was never overly devoted to his cause, but as he moves in with the foundation’s development director and her two teenaged sons, it becomes clear that he has no agenda other than getting along for as long as he can. I probably would have liked the novel better if there truly had been some master plan in the works, if the changes referred to in the title had occurred further along in the story and much more dramatically. A Changed Man was mildly entertaining but never life-changing. ( )

What is Vincent Nolan hiding? From the moment that Nolan---a former member of the Aryan Resistance Movement---walks into the Brotherhood Watch office to denounce his racist ways and offer his services to "keep guys like me from becoming guys like me," a nice tension develops around the question of what Nolan is not revealing as he carefully crafts---and edits---his narrative of redemption. This tension carries the reader through an often sluggish first two-thirds of the novel, as Prose mucks about in the bourgeois ennui of Bonnie, the divorced mother of two who takes Vincent into her home as part of his rehabilitation, and Maslow Meyer, the heroic Holocaust survivor who founded Brotherhood Watch but now questions his own commitment to the cause.

Unfortunately, Prose fails to reward the faithful reader with a satisfying payoff. What Vincent Nolan is hiding is disappointingly prosaic. And for a book that seeks to explore the messy contradictions of being human, the ending is too neat, too resolved.

Prose raises interesting questions: How do each of us craft our own narratives of self? And what gets left out of those narratives? What does it mean to do good? And how do we resolve the tension when our good deeds have unintended consequences? Why is it hardest to be charitable to those closest to us?

I just wish that Prose had spent as much time developing the plot as she does on probing what it means to be a changed man. ( )

If I'm in the mood for a frothy and funny summertime read, I wouldn't generally pick up a book about neo-Nazi skinheads. But I stumbled upon A Changed Man, and although I wouldn't call it frothy, it's an easy read and sometimes wickedly funny - a perfect beach read. It's about Vincent, a young skinhead complete with Waffen SS tattoos, who offers his help to a human-rights group headed by a Holocaust survivor. The organization puts Vincent up at he home of the development director, a tightly-wound divorced mom, and starts milking his touching reformation for all its worth in terms of publicity and donations.

This is a book that could easily have devolved into something oh so very arch and mean-spirited, but in the end the flawed characters, with all their human ambiguities, are quite endearing. It made me smile. ( )