Deftly mysterious...This novel fairly glimmer with the originality of his complexly tragic vision.
If you are in the mood for a slow moving book about uninteresting people, this one is for you. The tedium of the characters' lives is palpable as art gets looked at, shirts get ironed, and probably some other things happen--I can't remember. Everything about this is forgettable. The language is not beautiful and the story is not interesting, except for the first sentence, which spurs one on to the inevitable boring conclusion about which you will not care by the midpoint of the book. People have raved about this book and I am not sure why. This is not the kind of book that I didn't like and that will haunt me until one day I come to understand it. I am sure this is one I will forget as soon as I hit the submit button.
I'm with the rest of the folks who reviewed this. What was the big deal? Why the 'Publishers Weekly Best Book of 1998?' Very dull--uninteresting. Characters completely unbelievable as real folk.
