Negative Positive
Title: Like a pretentious imported cheese that's "gone off a bit"...?
Review: Like reviewer Bernstein below, I really wanted to fall in love with this book and others by Bonfiglioli.I heard his prose compared favorably with Wodehouse and imagined twisted plots, rapier wit, deft turns of phrase...in short, I got a bit goosebumpy. When I got my hands on this book, I jumped into the "comfy armchair" with a cup of coffee and orders for everyone around me to be quiet, and looked forward to a few hours of blissful bookish abandon.After the first chapter or so, I put those expectations aside, and simply hoped for a good read, but the book was not to my taste. The characters did not engage, the plot did not grip...the writing did not...well, it just didn't.I felt as though I were looking at one of those awful "3-D" pictures from the 1990's, and everyone could see the invisible dancing dolphins depicted in the swirling blue-green miasma but me. I just don't "get" Charlie Mordecai. Sigh.
Is the review positive or negative? 