Word: well-told
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...looking into the death of a colleague (the Cubans, fed up with Russians, want him to identify the body and scram--but no, Renko investigates); the sweltering coat because it is a last gift from his wife, dead of medical bungling in Moscow. The story is all amiable, well-told bosh, ending with an attempted military coup engineered (it's hard to explain) by a familiar-looking fellow in fatigues...
...real self" most interestingly. What makesNests worth-while for Calvino connoisseursis that his early work reveals a part of himselfthat is distinctly more personal from what thereader sees in his later work. Those new toCalvino would be better off starting else-where,but will find here a good story, well-told, thatcaptures the reality of wartime Italy, a poorboy's life, and the intersections...
Mendelsohn says that he looks for books or articles that have "a good story that is well-told...
These discursive interruptions, the sort of droning stuff therapists are paid to listen to, or that a patient friend hears well into the second bottle of white wine, tell nothing of importance about the title figure that couldn't have been handled in half a dozen brisk paragraphs. The flashback chapters turn a tidy, well-told book into a fat, soggy...
Turning real estate into a reflection of a mind that in turn mirrors a society is a tricky literary feat. Millhauser pulls it off by lowering the barriers between realism and myth. The effect is also to remove artificial distinctions between the entrepreneur and the artist. Both, this well-told tale of obsession suggests, are gripped by demonic energies and grand schemes. And both take big risks, not the least of which is to be consumed by their own creations...