I ripped through it yesterday in a few hours’ time. It was so… flimsy? Like more of a too-long short story or merely an outline of an idea? It was as if Mandel just had to get something, anything to the publisher to fulfill a contract real quick. The author character made me never ever want to write a book. The characters had no depth, the concepts weren’t fleshed out, and the vision of the future wasn’t credible to me. What did everyone else think?
All of your criticisms are probably valid and accurate. I’m too biased to give proper feedback because I find Mandel’s writing to be so atmospheric and engrossing that I almost don’t care what the plot is about. I start one of her books and am done with it before I realize how long I’ve been sitting there. Any book that can make me forget about time and the real world is a good book to me.