Title: The Archivist
Product review: Martha Cooley's first novel is definitely accomplished, but I found the middle third of the book to be quite arduous. While it had at first seemed wonderful that the characters were T.S. Eliot fans, it soon became annoyingly pretentious when they quoted Eliot to refer to events or emotions in their lives. Particularly harrowing was the middle third of the book which is a seemingly endless series of journal entries from a manic depressive? woman who quotes Eliot without cease and obsesses over the holocaust and her lost heritage. This section could definitely have been re-worked. The central "mystery" of the novel, if it can be called that, is very unengaging and I felt utterly deflated by the end. I resold the book the first chance I got. The concepts were interesting, as was the smooth prose style--but the parallels being drawn between the lives of the characters and that of T.S. Eliot were strained and the "madness" passages were overwrought and finally, tedious.
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