A review by cgcunard
Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship by Eric A. Blackall, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

3.0

Usually when I want to give something 3.5 stars it's a holistic judgment -- I more than "liked" it, but I didn't quite "really like" it. Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship is a different story. Although it was generally a 3-star book, there were brief shining 4-star moments and characters! Unfortunately, Goethe and I apparently disagree about what constitutes a five-star rating, because the very characters and situations that intrigued me in the opening of the novel were those that Goethe's ending undermined and wrote out. It packs a lot of potential, but it didn't follow through on the parts I was most interested in.

Still: better than Tom Jones! (I don't even want to know how many people in my department I would have to debate on that one...)