Jamie had heard a lot about this book, so after I read an article in the New York Times about it, I downloaded it and after several months, started on it. It is a lengthy novel, and took me a long while to get through, and at the end, I am not really sure what I think about it. It was one of the most engrossing and realistic novels I have read, but also one of the most depressing. I suppose that is a compliment to the author’s talent that she made me miserable reading it, but it did end up that way.
Oddly, the further I got into it, the more I wanted to read, and the more invested I got in the characters. In the most brilliant section, to me, the author is bewailing his unrequited love for one woman and matter-of-factly describing his engagement to another, and the language was just devastating. I felt like I was feeling the same things that he was, as well as wondering why he wasn't seeing things the way that I was. It was a weird feeling.
The end of the novel essentially is anticlimactic. While the plot threads are more or less tied up, the ending itself seems artificial, and consisted of page after page after page of the author reciting what he had discovered about life. I really wasn't interested in that – I wanted to know how things were coming with his would-be girlfriend!