You are considering whether to buy a product. You look at the reviews. Would the following review decrease or increase the chances of you buying the product?
Review title: Awful and pretentious, eh?
Product review: I kept from reading this novel because of all the terrible reviews it was getting all over the place; but then I decided no novel could be that bad. I was wrong--it's worse. The prose is at times undecipherable, and I kept reading only to see whether it would become even worse. It did. Ostensibly the story of Norma Jeane who became Marilyn Monroe, it amounts to drivel, hot-house imaginings about another's sexual life, pretentious pronouncements about acting and just about everything else Oates can conjure up, including (really!) stuffed birds. And why does every character have to end sentences with, "Eh?" .... And pretentious? Oh, my, just glance through all the italicized passages and you'll get an idea, just a hint, of how awful the whole thing is. I've never read any of Oates' other novels, dozens and dozens, but this one is enough. More than enough.
