Sarah Amirani

I have loved other Irving. This is so repetitive (where was Irving’s editor?? It’s one thing to be 900 pages, but quite another for 2-300 of them to be unnecessary.) You could say it has familiar themes; to me it felt more like a ripoff of Garp. Overall I felt taken advantage of. And I read the entire book, btw. Found 40-50% capable Irving, 10-20% creative and entertaining, the rest derivative. Disappointed.

Beautiful language, but unrelentingly bleak.