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Much Ado about "Beautiful Children"
February 11, 2008
We've
all been reading a lot about
Beautiful Children by Charles Bock. Does the hype add up to anything?
My friend R. tends to believe not, citing the bad reviews and the bandwagon-jumping (NYT mag profile, two NYT reviews, etcetera
ad infinitum) as evidence that people just follow pied pipers in publishing instead of looking out for what's really new, fresh, and deserving of praise.
He might be right.
Janet Maslin hated it. John Burdett, reviewing the book in The Washington Post,
did not, although he acknowledged that the novel is "not an easy read, nor is it a polished work" and that it has "a whiff of greatness."
Does a book get covered because everyone is too lazy to find something else to write about, or does a book get covered because it has "a whiff of greatness?"
I think my real question is whether or not it's possible to answer
that question. One thing I do know is that I believe a publication should think carefully about running so many pieces on one book, because there are too many other books out there offering whiffs of greatness, and too few review pages left.
Posted by Bethanne Patrick on February 11, 2008 | Comments (3)