Mengestu drones on about what people are thinking about saying, how they feel about saying something, what they might do if something else was said or whatever. As for the writing, it is not very inspired. Every now and then someone throws a brick through a car window. Well, yes, they do some things: drink too much, quit jobs, act lazy, have a relation with a prostitute, go to nude bars, fail to pay the rent, read Dostoyevsky to an 11 year old girl and play word games about African dictators. By page 50, one could care less about any of the characters who, frankly, do nothing interesting. In spite of my opinion however, this book is required reading for all freshmen at Middlebury College in Vermont. That would describe The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears. One tries to avoid are books that have bad prose and an uninteresting story. Examples are John Krakauer, Michael Crichton and Dan Brown. Then there are the writers who tell a very good story even though their prose is not great. Classic examples are Hemingway, Gore Vidal, Henry Miller, Victor Hugo and more recently Christopher Hitchens and David Foster Wallace. The really good writers can tell a story with eloquence and insight. In spite of the reviews, not a great book.
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