Helpful Score: 4
interesting premise. interesting characters, not all terribly likable, but very interesting. made me think on several different levels. an intriguing read.
Helpful Score: 4
Very compelling, multi-layered story. My only complaint is that characters are "left hanging" and you are left wondering what has happened to them. Perhaps that was the author's intent, but I would have liked to tie up loose ends.
Helpful Score: 3
Truly a satisfying read ... complex, involving characters ... moving, thoughtful, unsentimental. Highly recommended!!
Helpful Score: 2
Egan writes at a clip. She's more journalistic and economical with her words than poetic, but there were a few turns of phrase that impressed me with their insight. And, I'm not usually interested in topics that talk about the "me/dia, me/dia, me/dia" aspects of our culture that dominate, but she managed to make me interested. I'm glad I read her, and much of her writing is up to the hype, even if the subject matter felt like it had been done before.
Helpful Score: 2
An interesting tale of life after beauty.
Helpful Score: 2
A surreal novel that takes a look at the value we place on beauty; it's a thriller that's both intellectual and witty.
Helpful Score: 1
A good, very prophetic book (of our pre- and post-9/11 culture and technology)
Helpful Score: 1
The book started out strong and then just fizzled. I made it halfway through and just stopped reading it.
Helpful Score: 1
Compelling. Riveting. Excellent plot.
The author crafts a novel about a bunch of lying, self-centered people. I didn't like any of the characters, and I didn't care what happened to them. No one learned anything, and there were many things not resolved by the end of the book. We read this for my book club, and everyone felt the same. I didn't finish and don't plan to.
The Invisible Circus by Jennifer Egan is one of my favorite books. I didn't like this one quite as much but I would still recommend it highly.
This is a small book but an amazing find. Read it! Read it in a September 10, 2001 frame of mind. It is absolutely fascinating and painfully (literally) funny sometimes.
Insipid
Really enjoyed this read. Quite different, but interesting and well written. After a terrible accident this beautiful woman learns that beauty is not only skin deep.
This was a fairly disappointing book. It starts off with an interesting, likable protagonist, but the author quickly deviates to writing about characters I had no interest in. Many parts of the book are so dull that I had to force myself to keep reading, assuring my mind that the next section would be more interesting. The parts about the teenage girl and her nutcase uncle were especially boring to me and at some points they were hardly beyond YA-level. I'll give Egan credit for tying everything together quite well, and I liked the humorous final chapter, but the journey to get there was just way too long and clunky.
At the satart of this edgy and ambitiously mulit-layered novel, a fashion model named Charlotte Swenson emerges froma car accident in her Illonis hometown with her face so badly shattered that it takes eighty titanium screws to reassemble it. She returns to New York still beautiful but oddly unrecognizable, a virtual stranger in the world she once effortlessly occupied...
Fascinating
A fascinating story about a former model's life that is changed by a car accident.
