247
people found this helpful, as of 2023
ranked #116,447 most helpful
out of 571,544,897 reviews
★★★★★
Parsifal is dead. That's the beginning of the story.
Ann Patchett, who lives in rural seclusion with her pet raccoons (at least according to the profile in Modern Tennessean), is so good I wish she wrote the morning paper. That way I could wake up and read her sentences all day long.
If you've glanced at the editorials above, you know the novel's plot. Two of the most fascinating characters are already dead when we begin reading; they occupy the heroine's dreams, refusing to rest like peaceful corpses should. Among her other talents, Patchett is masterful with adolescents-- a notoriously tough breed to write about. And she's excellent with violence, too. Not the habitual, ritual violence of genre fiction, but the quick, mean violence of unhappy men.
I don't want to tell you too much. Read the book. If you don't like it, e-mail me and complain about what an idiot I am.
I don't think I'll be hearing from you.
