2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Absolutely Pointless, June 5, 2011
This review is from: The Silver Hearted: A Novel (Paperback)
Atmospherics, cities in code, heavy sighs, confused action; but no story to wonder about, no characters to like or loathe, no theme or point!
Readers will find it hard to withstand the author's intention to keep everyone in the dark. His writing is confused and indistict.
"A perfect work of art" Edmound White says on the cover. I wonder how much he was paid for those five words?
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Left me bewildered, October 11, 2011
This review is from: The Silver Hearted: A Novel (Paperback)
This is a novel in lyrical prose, but that takes place in the extreme mists of fictionland. The unnamed narrator goes from one unidentified city to another. We have no idea of the story's timeframe, either, except it takes place at some time when money was specie, presumably sometime between 1850 and the `30s, because he uses a $20 gold piece. Probably closer to the end of that range. Except that there are helicopters and paper towels, but no wire transfers or letters of credit. WTF? Speaking of specie, his job is to protect an immense and immensely heavy treasure of 36,000 silver dollars for a consortium of gamblers and other underworld heavies. He's on a riverboat in a warzone with only a teenage boy to help him, so this may involve some complications. The consequences of failure don't bear dwelling on.
I think the idea is to create a free-floating story space outside of time and history. This is only partially successful; I did as much thinking about this stuff as I did about the story.
Equally annoying: our hero seems totally incompetent at what he's actually there to do. He's supposed to be using the treasure to trade, but does no trading. He spends all his time protecting the treasure. You can think of several good reasons why this might be so, but, instead, he lies to his boss and says everything's going swimmingly. Meanwhile, the treasure diminishes in bribes and daily living.
The narration, though very well written, is incompetent. Several times he leaves his first person narrator to follow other characters in the third. "Don't ask me how I know this," he says. That's cheating. If you can't tell a story in the first person, use the third. No law against it. Or "I found this out later." Which brings us to...
I don't know if this counts as a spoiler or not. I dislike stories where you can't tell if the first person narrator survives or not. On one hand, he's telling the story in the past tense, so you'd think he must have done. On the other, his situation in the final pages seems pretty much hopeless. Stories written by ghosts are cheating.
The relationship with the teenage boy goes nowhere.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
don't read the blurbs, April 11, 2011
This review is from: The Silver Hearted: A Novel (Paperback)
Book publishers are often their own worst enemies. They print such unbelievably glowing reviews on the cover that most books can never live up to them. This is a typical example. The disappointment after reading such reviews, and then the book itself, is doubled as you can feel cheated. A great idea for a story is dissipated through leaden dialogue and an increasingly boring narrative. I was less and less interested in the narrator's tale as it progressed and was very glad when I finally finished it. Dull.
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