Word: novelled
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Piercy's occasional eloquence and skillful dialogue cannot compensate for Summer People's basic flaw: the lack of an interesting plot. The novel is engrossing enough for a beachside read, but in comparison to Piercy's earlier works, like Small Changes and Braided Lives, it disappoints. Those novels painted likeable, complex charcters, but Summer People offers only shadows of real people, moving in patterns too familiar to be truly interesting...
...Kohler's novel originated as a short story and was included in the 1988 collection of O. Henry awards. In its shorter version, I am sure this psychological drama was outstanding, but as a novel the story is stretched too thin...
Dogs, who are generally fairly stupid animals, will play this game for hours. Reading Sheila Kohler's first novel, The Perfect Place, is a lot like being the dog in this game...
...woman herself is an interesting psychological study. She epitomizes what some people call the modern malaise--with her complete isolation from others and her self-absorption. Unfortunately, her character is so unattractive that it is difficult to read through a novel that does not leave her side for a moment...
...author, it seems, has made the same mistakes of her central character--she has detached the novel from any kind of explicit emotion so much that the drama is buried, and the reader feels her character is almost irrelevant...