Title: Dull and overwritten
Product review: This is a book of similarly themed short stories, half of which are short shorts only a few pages long. The characters are people whose lives are untenable. They come from abusive upbringings and are now feeling trapped in their lives.Straub is an excellent writer and creates vivid, if odd, characters. However, most of these stories didn't work for me. The short shorts were for the most part vague ramblings, not cohesive stories. Of the longer pieces, Blue Rose was the best. It's about an 11 year old boy who reads an old book on hypnotism and discovers he has a gift for it when he puts his younger brother under and something terrible happens. The story suffers only from a weak, anticlimactic ending. The Juniper Tree is a rote pedophilia tale that also ends poorly. The Buffalo Hunter and Mrs. God were both overwritten, going on far longer than was necessary.
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