Title: Sad and beautiful
Product review: This story follows two boys and their relationships with each other and outsiders as they move from childhood into adolescence and eventually into adulthood. The story is told in alternating first person(s) through a variety of characters. While I am not generally crazy about that method of story telling, and it may not add much to the narrative in this case, the technique works reasonably well.One of the chapters (ch.3, I believe) appeared in the New Yorker some years back as a short story entitled "White Angel." For this chapter alone the book is worth the cover price. It is as moving as any short story I have read in years. Sadly, the book doesn't get quite that good again, but remains quite wonderfully written and entertaining (albeit quite depressing as well).Few contemporary authors write more artfully, more beautifully than Cunningham, but this cat is depressing. You wouldn't find me reading multiple works of his in succession--they're just too much to take.
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