Customer Reviews

Inventing God (British Literature)

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Geez, this is what passes for a "novel of ideas" these days? This must be more of a comment on the state of other novels than on this book. Yes, ideas are discussed here, but what novel worth half a penny does NOT deal with ideas? Imagine calling Conrad's works, for example, of Joyce's, "novels of ideas." Well OF COURSE!

Mosley is a guilty pleasure read, I've concluded. He starts talking about one character, gets him/her in an interesting situation, then leaves it and starts talking about some other character. As the book goes along, the characters' situations begin to intertwine. Kind of a cheap trick.

Yes, I gave a glowing review to his other book, Impossible Object, and the technique there is not really all that different. I still think that one's worth reading and a lot better than Inventing God, but Inventing God even made me wonder if I had not overestimated that earlier work.

Mosley is particularly horrible at similes and metaphors--he tends to err on the side of overly familiar or blasé ones-- which one would hope would not be such a difficult thing for a writer.