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stlake's review against another edition
I started reading this after St. Sebastian's Abyss, and just moved too quickly into it. I don't think I want to read another writing/critic/academic/small riffs with big importance/weird friend dynamics tight, insular novel right now. Although, all of this sounds like something I would enjoy. Maybe I'll come back to it, maybe I won't. Returning it to the library for now, either way.
monicariccio's review against another edition
3.0
A compelling portrait of how ambition and a lack of compassion can not result in 'true' poetry. It is true that everything of our little worlds must fade eventually, but it is also evident that one can choose to leave a good or bad impression on the worlds of others. The reader does have to suffer through a thoroughly unlikable narrator/main character.
shzn's review against another edition
informative
lighthearted
reflective
relaxing
sad
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
3.75
htoo's review against another edition
emotional
informative
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
I enjoy the writing more than I thought I would. The writing straddles the line of effective and ostentatious purple prose very well. The plot itself was very forgettable, maybe I’m just not the target audience. For a book about poets, there were no discussions on poetry aside from broad generalizations on what poetry is. As the story progress I felt like Roman and Bernard were supposed to be stand ins for the MFA vs NYC debate. If Bernard wanted to be a recluse, he could’ve done it in a city with affordable rent (I suggest the Midwest). I don’t get the idea of the starving artist, especially for characters who had so much privilege.
shirleytupperfreeman's review against another edition
2.0
I read this because the author is coming to the Festival of Faith and Writing but I discovered that not only do I not get poetry, I don't really get novels about poets. At least not this novel about poets. I still don't understand what motivated the characters to do what they did, think what they thought, be who they were.
sash512's review against another edition
challenging
reflective
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
ridgewaygirl's review against another edition
5.0
This is a quiet throwback of a novel. Although it was published in 2010 and the story begins in 1986, it has the feel of something taking place a half century earlier. Although the main characters are very different, this reminded me of [Stoner], with its tight focus on one man's adulthood spent in academia.
Roman attends a prestigious MFA writing program in the midwest, where he attends a seminar led by a prominent poet, Miranda Sturgis. He doesn't participate in class and only turns in work before the final meeting. He's critical of Sturgis and her air of detachment as well as her often cutting remarks about his fellow students' work. Nonetheless, he shows up at her house late one night demanding more and to his surprise, she invites him in.
Later, his joy in winning a writing prize that leads to his getting a tenure-track teaching job is marred by discovering that she was on the selection committee. He marries, has a child, settles down to teach, but also to write, to produce something that will out-shine his one published collection in a way so decisive as to lay to rest his own insecurities, as well as taking him back into the limelight.
He dug a trench into the process and stayed inside of it, waist-deep, sweating out the individual monologues, piecing them together. From inside the trench, there was no way to think of anything else: not marriage, not fatherhood. There was only the strength of voice, of words.
This novel is a look at the life of a man whose insecurities and arrogance shaped his life. It looks at his marriage to a fellow MFA graduate, his long friendship with another member of that program and at his own blindness in seeing how his own behavior affects those around him. It's beautifully written, with a melancholic edge.
Roman attends a prestigious MFA writing program in the midwest, where he attends a seminar led by a prominent poet, Miranda Sturgis. He doesn't participate in class and only turns in work before the final meeting. He's critical of Sturgis and her air of detachment as well as her often cutting remarks about his fellow students' work. Nonetheless, he shows up at her house late one night demanding more and to his surprise, she invites him in.
Later, his joy in winning a writing prize that leads to his getting a tenure-track teaching job is marred by discovering that she was on the selection committee. He marries, has a child, settles down to teach, but also to write, to produce something that will out-shine his one published collection in a way so decisive as to lay to rest his own insecurities, as well as taking him back into the limelight.
He dug a trench into the process and stayed inside of it, waist-deep, sweating out the individual monologues, piecing them together. From inside the trench, there was no way to think of anything else: not marriage, not fatherhood. There was only the strength of voice, of words.
This novel is a look at the life of a man whose insecurities and arrogance shaped his life. It looks at his marriage to a fellow MFA graduate, his long friendship with another member of that program and at his own blindness in seeing how his own behavior affects those around him. It's beautifully written, with a melancholic edge.
audaciaray's review against another edition
1.0
UGH.
Characters are all over-privileged self-important douchebags with a heavy dose of misogyny thrown in for the main character. Story is supposed to be heavy and about love and betrayal, but I just didn't see it. Blech. Also: novels about writers? Over it.
I'm so done with fiction for a while now. Back to my regular diet of non-fiction!
Characters are all over-privileged self-important douchebags with a heavy dose of misogyny thrown in for the main character. Story is supposed to be heavy and about love and betrayal, but I just didn't see it. Blech. Also: novels about writers? Over it.
I'm so done with fiction for a while now. Back to my regular diet of non-fiction!