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Title: Possibly the least artistic novel I've read in three years
Review: Vida's first novel reads like a drawn-out workshop exercise. One can almost imagine a professor telling her, "Have one of your characters held up at gun point and see where it goes."Unfortunately it doesn't go anywhere, other than for an aimless stroll through the extremely shallow, bland psyche of our dimwitted narrator. There is no depth here--the characters are flat, the potential emotional complexity engendered by this sort of traumatic event is basically ignored, and the first-person, present tense narration gives the book all the heft of an overwrought teenager's diary.On the plus side, the book is so threadbare, provokes so little introspection or contemplation, that one can read it and cast it aside in a couple of hours--though it did pain me to place it back on the shelf between Updike and Voltaire.Spend your time and money elsewhere.
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