I read a rave review written by a friend whose reading tastes I admire. Yes, it was good, in the beginning, and what held me were the familiar things mentioned as I've lived in Maine. But truly, the book got a little long in the tooth and I was really looking forward to it ending.
I was crazy for this book for about 100 pages. It portrayed class and money and prestige in working-class New England in such an authentic way. This was exciting to me. But when the narrator introduced the idea that he had interviewed the principals in the story and was writing a book based on his inquiries, the book began to go downhill, because White's narration didn't seem to fit what he could have found out that way. And then in the last third of the book the story itself fell apart. Badly.
Too bad! This book had such potential.
Too bad! This book had such potential.