Considering how long Dominick Dunne had been writing and the respect he had gained at it, I expected a better novel. I found the prose clunky, the dialogue stilted, and the plot uninteresting and loosely developed. I’m more forgiving about these issues with Too Much Money than normal, because it was Dunne’s final book....
In the study of fiction, we talk about “the willing suspension of disbelief.” It, along with imagination, is what the reader brings to the novel. It helps produce the trance we enter as we read, allows us to SEE the story rather than just READ it. Unfortunately, around the 75% mark, Everson took Siren...
We read Thomas Hardy today because he’s still relevant, but perhaps the issues that made him relevant in his time, due to the changing nature of the world, are different than the things that make him relevant in our time. The relevancy of The Well-Beloved, dealing with the superficial nature of romantic love, makes...
There is a philosophy in this novel, but I fear I’m not smart enough to grasp it. So I come back to it every few years, read it again, and puzzle over what it is that I’m reading. What I find in its pages is a emotional pot simmering on the stove. It looks...
Jay McInerney writes about characters on on the verge of insanity. They grip what little sanity they have left by a frayed rope that no doubt will soon break. In Story of My Life that character is Alison Poole, a twenty-year-old debutante living in New York, and who hangs out with other twenty-year-old debutantes,...
