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Title: MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING
Review: Although Susan Minot attempts to weave a spell with her sophisticated use of language, the emptiness of her often interchangeable characters undercuts her ambition. This is the story of Ann Lord: a boring, shallow woman who has yet to outgrow her twenty-five year old self. Although she is sixty-five years old, on her deathbed, and drifting in and out of a delirium of morphine-induced memory, she seems to have learned nothing of the power of enduring love. Her children, her three husbands, are of minor importance compared to the power of a single weekend of great sex with a deceitful womanizer. I do not understand what I am supposed to take away from this novel. It is impossible to form an attachment to any character, because the prose is all surface glitter. I believe that most great books take their strength from the power of love, which is absent from this novel.
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