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Title: One of the Greatest Books of All Time
Review: Matthessien is one of the two highest stylists working today. This was the first of his novels I read and at the time I kept wondering if I was reading it aright, so powerful is it. Some passages simply stick in my head verbatim and I'm known for dropping them in front of people I think would appreciate them. It has one of, if not the strongest opening images of any book I've read: the yearning for that which is impossible and that which will destroy us, put into image and action, the way fiction should do. The last line in the opening is a real slammer. And so it goes, chapter after chapter. No movie can do what a novel can, especially this one.
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