MixedThe Houston ChronicleWhitehead...throws a lot of things on the wall, hoping that if they don\'t all stick, at least they\'ll slide into consciousness for a while ... But however ambitious or multilayered this novel is, the reader may get stuck trying to decipher just what Whitehead is trying to say in this thing. In a meandering 389 pages he takes his time in composing the novel\'s myriad characters and situations, switching eras within chapters whenever he feels like it ... Whitehead often goes into directions that aren\'t that enticing. For every narrative piece the reader plows through fluidly, like the Sutter story, there are others that grind the book to a deadening halt. In theory Days has a brilliant, inviting premise. But once you get into the book the novelty wears off quickly. But it shouldn\'t be said that Whitehead doesn\'t know what he\'s doing as a novelist ... Whitehead knows how to mesh the quirky with the urbane ... if there is one thing the reader gets from reading John Henry Days, it\'s that density doesn\'t necessarily make for good storytelling.
