PositiveThe A.V. ClubThe leanness of E.L. Doctorow\'s Civil War novel The March takes some getting used to, given that the book often strains to be more epic than its 360-page container will allow ... This isn\'t one of those sprawling, multi-part books where everybody has a rich backstory and a neat arc to follow. The March is messy, relentless, and essentially unchanging. It begins in chaos, and ends with the chaos momentarily abated ... Out of all The March\'s mayhem emerges a portrait of America that\'s both as subtle as Doctorow\'s prose and as penetrating as the metal spike that gets stuck in one character\'s head.
Reed Arvin
MixedThe A.V. ClubPretty quickly—maybe too quickly—Blood Of Angels inches away from the race angle and becomes a spirited debate over the death penalty. Dennehy gets romantically involved with a defense witness, activist preacher Fiona Towns, and their clash of convictions forms the spine of Arvin's book. The outcome of the two legal cases aren't too hard to guess, but Arvin's ultimate opinion of capital punishment remains in doubt throughout, as he sets up the different sides of the argument, leaning heavily on the opinions of the tough, crafty old bastards who bring in the bad guys. Too bad, then, that those characters are such characters, and that the trail of clues in both murders leads to the kind of brilliant villain who only pops up in bestsellers. Arvin captures the flavor of middle Tennessee and the complexity of the law, but he steps away from reality whenever he pitches to genre fans.
Cormac McCarthy
MixedThe A.V. ClubThe Road is a metaphor for what every parent goes through to some degree, fretting over whether children really live for themselves, or merely as extensions of their parents' egos. McCarthy hits that note a little hard—and he completely oversells the notion of sacrifice in his flashback to the mother's florid final speech—but mostly, The Road is tonally spot-on, moving from one terse passage to the next, and continually horrifying readers just when the story seems to be heading to a more hopeful place.
