Title: Ambitious flops
Review: This is a collection of a novella and three short stories. The novella is about a college student dying of AIDS who is attended to by his roommate. To pass the time, they invent stories about world events and an Italian family in Helsinki. We learn very little about the family and nothing about Helsinki. It is a good refresher course in 20th century events as well as the process of slowly dying, but it is surprisingly flat emotionally. I loved the second story, about a fellow visiting Washington, D.C. and happening on the premiere of a string concerto by a Vietnam veteran. The third story is nine versions of a letter sent by a prison warden to a mother describing the last hours in the life of her son. It exposes a range of possibilities as to how people might face their execution. I am drawing a blank on the final story after only two weeks, if that tells you something. Read the second story, period
Is this product review negative?