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Title: Depressing, Unrealistic, Bad.
Review: What a tremendous disappointment! I must agree with other reader-critics: the book is no darn good. Chief complaints: the characters are underdeveloped and behave in ways that run contrary to what development existed for them. The story shifts from character to character, leaving huge plot lines lost in the transfer, never to be revisted. The moment one character begins undergoing change or growth, they are abandoned until the overly tidy happy ending. When you 'meet' these characters again at the end, the how's and why's of how they got there remain unanswered. It's just bad writing-- surprising from a writer seemingly so well respected and prolific. I put the book down several times out of sheer annoyance with the stylistic sence of Oates-- I finally plowed through to the end, no happier than when I had abandoned it. You're better off reading an as of yet unread Toni Morrison--an author who weaves characters around each other with far better precision and dexterity.
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