MixedThe Washington PostIt is excessive and exhausting, a Gallic admixture of Philip Roth’s orificial obsessions, Edgar Allan Poe’s penchant for death, Thomas Pynchon’s songs and wordplay, and the shape-shifting and time-folding of Virginia Woolf’s Orlando, all with a wink toward Boccaccio’s Decameron. If that sounds overwhelming, or like the literary equivalent of Frankenstein’s monster, it is ... By the time I got to the last page, and the novel had taken an unexpected turn toward vilifying capitalism and environmental allegory...I was tired.
