Brad Newsham

I feel just short of outraged by this book -- especially all the hype around it. It seems as though once someone drinks the cool-aid supplied by other reviewers (and what an avalanche of praise it received!), well, stand back, get out of the way, everyone else is going to pile on. Diaz has some interesting insights and some great phrasing, but in the first 200 pages (out of 400) I felt zero connection to any character or plot circumstance. It picked up after those first 200 pages -- finally, the connection between the young woman writer and her anarchist father at least felt real... But Pulitzer Prize! A book that gets a Pulitzer gets my attention. But this one left me questioning (yet again) the whole "agent/editor/publisher/bookstore/library industrial complex". How dare they shove a mediocre book down our throats!