Title: A Mirthless Disappointment
Product review: "Evolution of Jane" was a tremendous letdown, a short story inflated to book length. Besides lacking any of the wit of Schine's earlier books, the plodding narrative reads more like an essay with occasional illustrations than a novel. Jane (far and away the story's least interesting character) revels in a narcissism so unbearable that Schine's superficial asides on Darwin are easier to swallow than Jane's agonizing over lost friendship. And the heroine's "evolution" doesn't begin until a page or two before the end, making for a quite unbelievable revolution. To paraphrase a character from one of Woody Allen's middle-period films, "We liked your earlier, funny books better."
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