“If you come to this book expecting high Southern gothic drama and action, you will be deeply disappointed. The colors in this book are muted and subtle, and maybe this story only makes sense to someone who has felt this kind of last gasp of adolescence at the apex of one's life, when one realizes that what ambition they have is no longer enough to get them through life, and whatever you are is what you are.
Those frustrated with Binx Bolling's character in this book are kind of missing the point, or rather, they're getting the point more than they know. By his own admission, he is not an ambitious man, neither professionally nor intellectually. He prefers to watch other people live big lives than to go through the trouble of going out himself to do it. He has chosen the path more traveled, and his entire life, it has been enough. And as a spectator, the life of the people he watches becomes more real to him than his own life.
This is not an existential novel, except indirectly. What it is is a note-perfect portrait of someone who learns to be happy being exactly what he is. I think it's a phenomenal work, utterly realistic in its thousand shades of murky grey.”
chicobangs wrote this review Tuesday, December 12 2006.
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