Friday, March 16

Impenetrable fortress

As promised, I finally finished The Fortress of Solitude. I was using its receipt as a bookmark, and as I closed the book last night, I glanced at the purchase date. 12/30/03. '03? Really? Three f-ing years? No, no, I assured myself. I surely did not start reading it right away. Let's check All Consuming on this one: 41 weeks. It has taken me 41 weeks to read this book. Unacceptable. Though I lay some of the blame on Lethem. This book was heavy on description, light on plot. He shifted narrative voice and style several times, and you never really got a feel for the characters, though he described '70s Brooklyn pretty well. The superhero stuff was fairly easy to take because it wasn't the main part of the book, but all in all, it left me wanting. I'm disappointed, because I loved Motherless Brooklyn so much. I'm still going to give Gun, With Occasional Music a shot, though. The man can write.

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