There is a reason Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, the Brontes, Jane Austen and George Eliot are still read today. That is because their narration is distinctive and linear, not to mention the gorgeous prose.
Today's young writers, especially the male ones, have no lack of ability to write gorgeous prose. But reading Anthony Marra's novel, "A Constellation Of Vital Phenomena," is like putting a puzzle together. Set in an abandoned hospital in war torn Chechnya during the late Nineties, and into 2004, the novel concerns the coming together of several people, and their almost Dickensian connections to one another. Marra goes back and forth in time, forcing the reader to keep details in check, in order to figure out those connections. Dickens, and the aforementioned, would have presented the whole thing straightforwardly.
Which is one problem I have with this novel, and which leads me to wonder, if this is the writing style of today's age, how long will it last? I don't mean in terms of continuance, but in terms of durability? Will Marra's book, and others' such (Safran Foer, David Foster Wallace, for example) be read a century from now? I won't be here to see it, but I have to wonder if the answer will be no. But Jane and the Gang will still be around.
The story is incredibly heart wrenching, but it is worth it to read the last sentence on the page. It will cause the reader to heave a sigh of happiness.
Somewhere in here is a great novel. But, with all the work the author forces the reader to do, it merely becomes good when it might have been otherwise!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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