Title: Twee
Product review: Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards, when asked what he thought of Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, is rumored to have responded "Subtle." The description might be more reasonably applied to Cisneros' The House on Mango Street, which is a damn sight too subtle in my opinion. It is, as the previous review pedantically states, a series of vignettes. However, unless one is easily seduced by breathless prose and the kind of poetic resonance that is believed to swirl around descriptions which rely almost wholly on the reader attaching her own range of implications about character and setting to a few pedestrian facts, look elsewhere. For self-indulgence and wilful naivete, take Cisneros; for virtuoso writing combined with the excitement of plot and the interest of psychology look to Martin Amis or Michael Chabon.
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