Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Bought this for a trip as a result of the over the top Times review and its selection (also by NYT) as one of the year's ten best. Boy was I sorry. Couldn't finish it because of Mr. O'Neill's constant striving to find the most complicated constructions/word groups for his sentences, an effort which added nothing to the story or the development of its characters. Here's an example (and the place I stopped reading). The main character is in his apartment looking out double doors leading to his balcony after a snow storm and at a small drift of snow piled up against them. "I was torn between a ridiculous loathing of this obdurate wintry ectoplasm and an equally ridiculous tenderness stimulated by a solid's battle against the forces of liquefaction." I rest my case.