Negative Positive
Title: dazzling
Review: I am glad to see the term "picaresque" applied to this novel, for it truly belongs within that genre. But while the story bounds along, at times verging on the highly improbable, the language dazzles on every page - in every paragraph, in fact. The author, to whom English was (I imagine) a 2nd or 3rd language, shares with Joseph Conrad (and not a few other non-native English speakers) an enviable mastery of the most subtle wit, the choicest use of epithets, the snappiest of similes. And, having spent a bit of time in Tbilisi, Georgia, in the past decade, I thought more than once or twice in the course of my reading how well that valley city, with its river, smog - and wall-to-wall gangsters - could have served as the setting of this unlikely but likeable tale...
Is the review positive or negative? 