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Title: Dull, dull, dull
Review: I've had two attempts at reading this, some 5 years apart. Couldn't get into it the first time and really pushed through the pain barrier on the second attempt. The author is somewhat impressed by his own erudition but does not give his readers anything satisfying - the language lacks colour and poetry, the characters are narcissistic and unlikeable and the dialogue is woefully wooden and unbelievable. Perhaps Perlman had a shopping list of pet obsessions that he just had to weave into one long turgid thesis and somehow managed to pass it off as fiction. I pushed on to the end, determined to find some redeeming qualities, but overall a thoroughly unenjoyable process.
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