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Title: great novel; distracting edition
Review: This is a terrific novel, even if bleak, as some of the reviewers claim. And really, the bleakness is leavened by a wicked sense of humor. My only complaint is about this particular edition, the Oxford World's Classic. In their attempt at erudition the editors insert irritating asterisks all too frequently in the text, in order to draw our attention to explanatory notes at the back. The notes are in most cases unnecessary, explaining things most readers would already know, and seem provided more in a desire to justify an annotated edition than out of actual need. In any case, they could have a volume with notes included by page at the back of the book, without placing an asterisk in every paragraph that gets discussed--if we have a question on a particular page we could look to the back and see if there is any explanation for that page. So, this a great book, but I'd get a different edition.
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