Over the course of the twentieth century, three generations of the Lamontagnes will weather love, passion, jealousy, revenge, and death. Their complicated family dynamic will propel their rise, and fall, and take them around the world, until they finally confront the secrets of their complicated pasts.
... immensely entertaining and fluid ... If at times key pivot points depend too conveniently on coincidence, Dupont’s spellbinding tale nevertheless spectacularly drives home the wonders of long-form storytelling ... Through his characters, Dupont has woven a memorable one.
... [a] bruiser of a novel ... This first half of the novel, chock full of digressive stories about seemingly minor characters, has a rambling, overstuffed, 19th-century feel. But then, more than 250 pages in, Dupont shifts gears; the novel narrows and becomes epistolary ... While the intensity of Dupont’s prose can be maddening, the sweet, sour, and salty world he creates is thoroughly addictive.
... an unwieldy yarn ... As the novel accelerates toward the finale, the disparate threads interweave heavy-handedly with the characters converging on the Roman film set. While jam-packed with family secrets and deceptions, Dupont’s sprawling tale also risks reader exhaustion. Those who enjoy sprawling family sagas and are willing to put in the work will find this outing has its rewards.
