Negative Positive
Title: Flat, unimaginative, pointless
Review: What a silly premise for a book. One poem in the voice of the non-existent black man whom Susan Smith said took her sons, okay, maybe. A whole cycle? Ugh. Are blacks are oppressed; is racism insidious? Yes, of course, duh. But Eady has nothing to say except to repeat and repeat the sequence's only idea--"isn't it rotten that the bogeyman is imagined as black in this racist world"--(to which I answer, "yeah, sure, and?") in uninspired language. The Running Man sequence unfortunately isn't much better. But I saw the musical that was made out of this sequence and at least on the page we're spared the silly preenings of actors convinced they're doing something revolutionary when in fact they're just rehashing rehashed material. Publisher's Weekly's comparison of Eady to Ai is way off: Ai's work is subtle, nuanced, complicated and well-written.
Is the review positive or negative? 