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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A great read, and more,
By A Customer
This review is from: Extravagance: A Novel (Hardcover)
This is a really excellent novel--a page-turner--but a lot more than that. It's an exploration of how human nature created the financial bubble that just burst. Krist sets the novel on two separate but parallel tracks--Wall Street at the end of the 20th century and London at the end of the 17th century, when stocks were fairly new and exotic things. Krist has done his homework; the historical sections are authentic, making you feel as if you've been transported to another world. But, however different the language and customs of 1690s Londoners from 1990s New Yorkers, the action in both places revolves around human universals: ambition, love, temptation, and certainly greed. That's why Krist can weave the two stories into a single narrative that gains momentum as it proceeds. This is a high-wire act, and he pulls it off.
3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
What's the point?,
By
This review is from: Extravagance: A Novel (Paperback)
Quoting from the blurb on its back cover, Extravagance is a novel of "financial mania" and is set in two time periods - London in the 1690's and New York in the 1990's. It is a single story, that of William Merrick, an ambitious young man. who comes to stay with his uncle in the big city, but moves from one time period to another, for example he could be having lunch with his uncle in 17th century England, leave and step into a cab in New York 20th century. The same characters are having parallel lives and interactions with each other in both time periods. This simply happens and is never explained to the reader, are they time travelers, a group reincarnation, a dream?????? It seems the only reason we are constantly shifted back and forth is to demonstrate the similarities in the two periods with regard to stock trading and sudden wealth. Though the book's concept is intriguing and includes some clever and witty writing the actual plot simply did not hold my attention. The cliche characters are totally one dimensional, shallow, greedy and predictable in every way.
Perhaps OK for someone who enjoys historical fiction about money, particularly stock market money.
5 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Way underrated,
By Bartleby Scrivener (Omaha, NE United States) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Extravagance: A Novel (Hardcover)
I enjoyed this daring comparison between two economic booms and the moral struggles straddling them both. An enoyable undertaking from first to last.
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