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Title: Small and self-absorbed
Review: I opened this book with great anticipation, thinking it would evoke California's San Joaquin Valley, its landscape, people, challenges and changes. Instead Varni has written a small, self-absorbed account, which appears to be largely autobiographical, of his unhappy dysfunctional family. Unhappy families can be the stuff of great literature but nothing in the telling here gives the book wings; humdrum, often cruelly-rendered details collect on every page, leaden and inert. Varni's bitterness is occasionally redeemed by patches of attractive writing, but the overall effect is that of being forced to listen to someone in a smelly bar pour out their sad tales of mom and dad. One can't wait for it to end.
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