This book is slow to build. It almost put me to sleep in the prologue and the first chapter. If I had had anything else to read I probably would have set it aside. But once I got about halfway through I realized I had to finish it.
The problem is absence of plot, which seems almost a pre-requisite for winning the pulitzer. The book is character driven. Half of it is dialogue, and the other half "character introspection" - at least it seems that way to me. The characters were not interesting at first, and neither was the subject matter. It took a long time and many pages before I developed any interest.
Russo is a master at characterization, though, and taking Faulkner's advice, I could learn a lot by studying this book's techniques. Only at the end of the book do things pick up a little and the many lives start to come together with some tension and movement.
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