novella
Active Member
I'm about 4/5 through this novel. I read raves about it. Prose (how's that for an author's name?) has a new novel out, and several reviewers mentioned Blue Angel as her best.
Well, I expected a lot more. It's okay. It's a regular, well-written normal novel, no big deal. Certainly not worthy of raves, IMO. The main story is about a creative writing teacher who develops a 'thing' with one of his students. They're at a posh New England liberal arts college. It pretty much sticks to all the cliches. Someone called it satire. If satire means deploying every known cliche about a situation, well, maybe it is satire. To me, it just reads like a novel with cliche-ed situations and characters. I haven't laughed out loud or anything.
So I'm wondering why it got such hot reviews. Maybe the reviewers are all so familiar with this situation that they think it's way more sharply observed than I do. But then again, I'm pretty familiar with the liberal-artsy N.E. college scene, as I used to work at one.
I'm not going to say it's a bad book. It's just not any better than a lot of other books. No spark, no fizz, nothing memorable or poignant or jarring. Just a tepid, predictable story written by an accomplished writer.
Well, I expected a lot more. It's okay. It's a regular, well-written normal novel, no big deal. Certainly not worthy of raves, IMO. The main story is about a creative writing teacher who develops a 'thing' with one of his students. They're at a posh New England liberal arts college. It pretty much sticks to all the cliches. Someone called it satire. If satire means deploying every known cliche about a situation, well, maybe it is satire. To me, it just reads like a novel with cliche-ed situations and characters. I haven't laughed out loud or anything.
So I'm wondering why it got such hot reviews. Maybe the reviewers are all so familiar with this situation that they think it's way more sharply observed than I do. But then again, I'm pretty familiar with the liberal-artsy N.E. college scene, as I used to work at one.
I'm not going to say it's a bad book. It's just not any better than a lot of other books. No spark, no fizz, nothing memorable or poignant or jarring. Just a tepid, predictable story written by an accomplished writer.