Look Away [Hardcover]

George Alec Effinger (Author), Donna Gordon (Illustrator), Gregory Benford (Introduction)

Product Details

• Hardcover
• Publisher: Pulphouse Pub; First edition. edition (June 1990)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1561461059
• ISBN-13: 978-1561461059
• Average Customer Review: 2.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #9,825,609 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Alternate what?, November 19, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: Look Away (Hardcover)

Look Away is a work of alternate Civil War history. Alternate history needs several qualities to be any good, and one of the things it needs is a basis in real, believable history. Unfortunately, Look Away barely slides by in this regard. Essentially, it's 1864, and European countries have formed a UN-like body which is interfering, as rather violent peacekeepers, in the American Civil War. I don't find this plausible: the UN seems like a post-WWI idea to me, not like a mid-19th century conceptual possibility. The characters as well have an anachronistic quality: their thoughts and speech do not, for me, contain the flavor of the 19th century. The book is very short, and it seems to me that such an enterprise should really take up a whole novel -- come on, *someone* has to write a decent "if the Civil War lasted longer/went differently" novel; there hasn't been a readable one since Kantor's well-written but Pollyannaish effort, and yes, I'm including Turtledove. Because of Look Away's brevity, character development, especially the main character's breakdown at the end, seems unsupported by events.

Having said that, this book has qualities I like: spare, stark language and a grim ending. While I didn't find the international peacekeeping force believable, I did like the idea of foreign intervention in the war, and the host of both foreign and local armed groups and militias that springs up; the Floridian imperialists were amusing, though only given a throw-away mention. It seems, unfortunately, that the author has more than enough literary talent to write a good alternate Civil War novel, but let laziness get the better of him.