Title: Too insular
Product review: Although the writing is quite nice in some places, this novel becomes quite numbing in it's glacial pace. A novel about an ordinarly family has to have a universal appeal, but this book is an endess exercise in self-indulgent navel-gazing. The detail is so minute and insular that you're left gasping for air. And books where the protagonist is so unnaturally self-aware and insightful bothers me. If he was this in tune with his family, then his emotional distance does not make sense.
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