The Historian
by Elizabeth Kostova
She'd probably fail a pop vocabulary quiz taken from her own book!(9/20/2007)
This book reads like an 8th grader writing with a thesaurus in the other hand. It seems like her goal is to "prove" she is smart by using excessively long strings of cumbersome and quaint adjectives to describe everything. She writes about ten pages of plot in the first 130 pages. The characters are two-dimensional. Gratuitous victims appear, become dear friends, and are killed off, in some cases within two pages. Violence and gore are used innappropriately for shock value. The story lacks creativity and direction, and for all the ten-dollar words the writing lacks substance or style. There couldn't possibly have been any editing. How on Earth did this book get published? The worst part, however, is that this poor excuse for an occult thriller is being forced down the throats of some public-school kids as required reading. She must be somebody's blood relative for that to have happened.
BookBrowse seeks out and recommends the best in contemporary fiction and nonfiction—books that not only engage and entertain but also deepen our understanding of ourselves and the world around us.