Title: Big Long Middlebrow entertainment
Product review: This book is fun to read for most of its 800 page bulk, and a lot of the characters are enjoyable to spend time with. It does not, however, live up to the promise of Bonfire of the Vanities. It opens in a smilar vein, casting a critical eye on a variety of interesting denizens of high-society Atlanta. It falls flat when it involves Conrad Hensely, the huge-forearmed Everyman loser who ends up as the prophet of the latest cult religion--the return of Stoicism. While it remains a relatively pleasurable reading experience, the last third of the book really calls into question what the author is up to--it was working fairly well as social satire, but when the last third rolls around, it almost sounds like a pitch for the Stoic religion some of the characters convert to. Didn't work for me.
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