Title: As wooden as the proud ships they sailed in
Review: This is a research-driven book. The author obviously did a lot of reading and then stacked up her note cards, hoping the accretion of historical details would ipso facto form a novel.It didn't. The book is tedious. The characters are cardboard. The dialgoue sounds like one of those Hollywood Golden Age historical dramas where the 16th-century Englishmen all think they should sound like Shakespeare.And like one of those dispiriting Greenland winters, it goes on and on and on.Occasionally she captures a mood, but by and large this is the Elvis Impersonator of sagas. Hard to believe it's by an author as good as Jane Smiley.
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