I was really hoping to like this book. Expecting to, in fact. The author got a good recommendation from a person I respect. I'm now about 40 pages from the end and I find it unquestionably the worst book we have read in book club, and quite possibly the worst book I've ever read cover to cover.
The set up is okay. The characters are fine. The plot kind of meanders along. It feels like he wrote each section after waking up from a hangover. Now where was I?....what were they doing?...how can I get them out of this without leaving my bed? I just didn't buy any of it.
His main character, one Bodean Gazzer, is a caricature of a white male racist Southerner, wins the lottery, $28 million, but finds there is another identical ticket, so his take will merely be $14 million. He finds that the other winner is a black woman, JoLayne Lucks, and is determined to steal her ticket as well and claim the whole prize.
I don't know. If I'm a down on my luck redneck with no life and no prospects and I won the lottery, I think I'd head straight to the lottery office to collect my $14 million. So there's that. Then they commit a whole bunch of felonies on the way for no reason, and...I just don't get it. It has some amusing moments, I suppose, but it's certainly not laugh-out-loud funny, and in the tradition of page-turning pulp, I was angry at having to turn the page to find out what happens to these meatheads.
Just sloppy writing, sloppy storytelling. I'm reminded of a great German line I heard from a gifted tenor a few years back- Das Leben ist zu kurz fur billigen Wein. I think that goes double for books, which take at least some time to read. (Tho it feels as if this book took about as long to write as it takes to read). Life is too short for crappy books. Leave this one on the $1 table.
But then again, what do I know? I welcome your cranky disagreement. Perhaps I missed something.
But then again, what do I know? I welcome your cranky disagreement. Perhaps I missed something.
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