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Title: overrated
Review: I would like to think it is because I am only 22 and this novel was written by a man 40+ my age and that I cannot relate to him, but I have read Faulkner and Hemingway and McCarthy and can't rationalize anymore. This book was horrible. In Haruf's attempt to emulate great novelists, he fails with intermediate and weightless prose, reminding me of many 'authors' in my middle school. The characters had no feeling. They were as vague as the setting and I had no impression of the novel except that it was a waste of time. The dialogue was highly implausible and the situations the characters fall into are so desperately lacking feeling that I don't feel for them. If this book was a finalist for the National Book Award, then literature is going downhill. It's violently upsetting.
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