Customer Reviews

No star is Lost

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The Danny O'Neill books are, at once, one of the great evocations of childhood, the great coming of age novels, and the great works of naturalism. Although they were, for me, utterly enthralling, as well as enlightening, reading throughout, some have found that the full quartet gets repetitive as one goes forward through nearly twenty years, and 2,000 pages of Danny's life and times. "Studs Lonigan" may be better because it's a more integrated and cumulatively effective - indeed a tragic--work. Still, Farrell's artistry is, chapter by chapter and volume by volume, at a high peak in the O'Neill books. For those inclined to make the journey, "A World I Never Made," is the best introduction to the series on the conventional grounds that it comes first chronologically, and as a fine book. However, for those looking for the best of the O'Neill series, I'd recommend "No Star is Lost" - best, at once, as Penrod-like entertainment, as social chronicle and as drama. My reading of both "A World I Never Made" and "No Star is Lost" and their reviews convinces me that the former got somewhat better reviews not because it was in fact judged a better stand-alone work but because the latter was regarded as repetitive following "World." Indeed, had Farrell written "No Star is Lost" as a sole Danny O'Neill novel, I suspect that he would be regarded as author of two masterpieces "Lonigan" and "Lost," - instead of one. As things are, "Lost" gets lost in the shuffle, and the structure of the O'Neill books - like say that of Dreiser's three Cowperwood novels too diffuse for the whole to stand as a masterpiece. Yet "No Star is Lost" can stand powerfully alongside "Studs Lonigan." Indeed, it is the more socially and emotionally wide-ranging work, a more finely crafted one, a powerful tragic expression of a whole family (and generation's) plight, and a work with an unforgettable tie-in to "Studs Lonigan" in its final pages.