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Oct 08, 2015Qwfwq rated this title 4 out of 5 stars
Like a lot of people, I was completely won over by the The Sisters Brothers and was anxious to see how deWitt could follow it up. And my verdict? I'm not entirely sure. There were three plot points that I felt violated the "rules" which deWitt implied for the novel from its outset. The whole spirit of the book came off the rails (for me at least) and I can't quite overlook these flaws. That said, I think it is still a very remarkable novel. I can think of very few books where the tone is so charming, in fact the style of the narrative is so engaging that I almost did not care about the plot very much. Like in The Sisters Brothers, expectations are subverted, and I found the ending very satisfactory although I suspect many others will feel cheated. In the end the book had me questioning my own relationship to the books I read. What more could one ask from a novel than that? Well, maybe one that didn't have those near-fatal flaws I mentioned.