PanThe Buffalo NewsAt first René uses Rushdie’s rich language filled with great learning. Reading vintage Rushdie is an education in itself. The reader is forced to look up words and references. But after the only interesting characters in the book — René’s parents — are introduced and killed off, the language deteriorates ... A visual thinker, René is incapable of writing well. He writes treatments or scenes for future movies or sometimes just random notes. The learned references evaporate and episodes are compared to scenes from classic films. This works only if the reader is a connoisseur of classic films. Even then it is a lazy way of describing something. The rest of the novel is grim, dealing with rich people whose idea of fun is not fun. The world that was fair and reasonable is left behind and we enter a world of betrayal and deceit that runs on 'bribaryandcorruption.' By removing the mystery from Golden’s world Rushdie shows us 'nossing.'
Megan Marshall
PositiveThe Buffalo NewsThe reader’s concern about the author constantly interrupting the narrative to discuss the effects this unfortunate incident had on her is remedied only on the last page. That’s a gift for the persevering reader. Marshall adds details about Bishop’s life she couldn’t possibly have gotten from Bishop’s correspondence and her interviews with many of Bishop’s living friends. Even more disturbing is the fact that she often quotes only parts of Bishop’s poems and resists analyzing them in any depth. This is not a normal literary biography. It slowly dawns on the reader what Marshall is really up to. She is writing a makeup exercise for the one she’d failed, a novel as much as it is a biography. Excellent Bishop biographies already exist. In the end it becomes an extraordinary book about how Elizabeth Bishop moved people in her life and her poetry.
