I could deal with their story fading to the background as the generations proceed, but once the spotlight is on Auberon and Sylvie, I just couldn't stomach another paragraph about her panties or magical brown Puerto Rican skin. I found the relationship that the novel opened with charming and maturely written. But then I gave up and just felt annoyed I'd even gone that far. The style alone propelled me about 75% of the way through the whole book. However, I'm unable to comment on whether the zigzagging plot coalesces into anything coherent by the end. Crowley approaches this in the best parts of Little, Big-here's someone who can write about a child yawning for the first time in a way that leaves me wide-eyed until it dawns on me what it is that's being described. "Style over substance" is widely understood to be a criticism, yet some artists can chisel out a style so precisely that it becomes substance itself.
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