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Title: The Weightiness of Anita Shreve.........
Review: The Weight of Water is written in a very detached way.... there is no depth of feeling. It is impassionate, hazy. Shreve worries too much about what she thinks is the beauty of her language, and not enough about character development (there is none) and plot (thin, predictable, uninteresting.) The language should be the strength then, but it's overwrought and pretentious. Written annoyingly in present tense, Shreve lets her protagonist wander around in some kind of detached, poetic stupor. The off-in-space look on Shreve's face on the picture printed on the back of the novel is appropriate. The Smutty Nose murders are a great topic for a novel, and I even approve of the direction Shreve takes this. However, she feels the need to attach a dumb modern co-plot, and ruins the whole thing anyway with her so-so very lovely prose. Avoid this book at all costs.
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