Didn't hold my interest enough to finish. Like others, I thought the prose was overly verbose. The author seemed to try too hard. ( )

I haven't read any literary fiction in a very long time. The blurbs describe the "beauty" of the language. This seems to mean an over-reliance on similes and metaphors. Some of the similes, especially, are jarringly apt, almost painful in the way they rearrange lazy habits of thought. The plot carries the prose along until it doesn't, and in the last 15 pages or so of what is a relatively short novel, the plot runs over the prose and I couldn't care anymore about the characters or the language. ( )

I cannot say I really enjoyed this book although it was not as bad as I was expecting after reading the first few pages. Initially it seemed like MacKenzie was just trying too hard with phrases like "The exhausted, somnambulant city..." and "the cholesterol of automobiles" and was trying to use every long word he could find in the thesaurus. That did improve as the story went on although it still felt disjointed with so many different facets of Paul's life being covered. On one hand the story seems to focus on Paul's relationship with his father, brother and ex-wife and then it seems like MacKenzie felt the need to throw in a suspense story as well. I did not feel like the two meshed well to form a cohesive story.

I wish we had heard a little more from Paul's father on what his thoughts were about his previous devotion to Hitler. I think my favorite part of the book was the funeral in which his father's neighbors stands up to tell his story of how he knew Paul's father. ( )