beautifulmadness

Set in Western Pennsylvania, the story occupies a week in the lives of six major characters, cutting back and forth between their points of view. For a while this works well but in the end the novel fails because this method becomes tedious and I began to lose interest in most of the characters. Issac and Poe are central to the story and the notion that their lives are inextricably interwined is a powerful one. The reader begins to see how one completes the other and how they do not seem to be able to exist independently. This theme could have been explored thoroughly and we would not have been treated to an extra hundred pages of the other characters flagellating themselves for what they didn't do to improve the lives of Issac and Poe when they had the chance. In the end the book is overlong and tedious but just reading the Issac and Poe chapters is illuminating and worthwhile. The author is promising but could be briefer. I don't know how many times he described the setting in repetitive terms "green hills", "the greenness" etc but I don't want to go back and look!

2022-11-14 13:41