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When I heard Joshua Ferris, one of my favorite writers, had come out with a new book, I jumped for joy. I began his latest novel with great anticipation; halfway through, I was beginning to have my doubts, and the last 100 pages found me unable to contain my excitement over ending having to read this book.
Josh, hon, you overreached, this time! All the ideas--identity theft, criticizing today's Social Media, the historical and linguistic references to Judaism, Hebrew, Israel and other derivations thereof are endlessly interesting. And there are some brilliant passages within that show Joshua Ferris is still a good writer.
The problem is none of the characters he creates--not even minor ones, like Uncle Stuart or the enigmatic Grant Mercer are interesting. Least of all his lead figures---a 30-plus dentist named Paul C. O'Rourke, and his staff, consisting of ex-girlfriend Connie, and an overtly Catholic type named Betsy--are of any interest to the reader. And without interesting characters, no matter how good a writer you are, there is no story.
This is called a novel, but Ferris crams so many ideas into one book, I think he would have had more success writing this as a personal treatise, like Jonathan Safran Foer did, with "Eating Animals." Now, I love Safran Foer, but I did not read that. So, I cannot say that if Ferris had taken this approach I would have read it, either, but at least I would not have wasted my time on something that is halfway between the two, but never succeeds at either.
I still have faith in Joshua Ferris, but his next book is really going to have to prove it!
Otherwise, he will be consigned to my Island Of Unread Authors!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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