Title: Oates makes a bad Tom Wolfe
Product review: Oates attempts a spiralling, stream-of-conscience style that reads suspiciously like a craven imitation of Tom Wolfe. She tries to pull off the highwire stunt of writing from a man's perspective, but the voice rings false. Ideally, a novel presents a seamless front to the reader; we should have no idea how it was constructed. "What I Lived For," unfortunately, reveals all of its machinery.
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