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Tuesday, December 19, 2006

Back Where He Started

Back Where He Started: A Novel by Jay Quinn

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

April 27, 2006


Conflict is the essence of drama. This book has no conflict, thus no drama, thus no interest for me reading it. But I persevered until the end, although the book seemed over before it ever began.

I've noted this in at least one other book in which the story is so happy and everyone is so well-adjusted there seems no point in the story except to reinforce how crummy the rest of our lives are. Why can't we be more like Chris and his family?

Everything rolls off Chris like water off a duck's back as he's dumped by his long-time partner, his youngest "son" gets married, his "daughter" and "daughter-in-law" get pregnant, and he finds true love (again) with a gruff fisherman/dog trainer. In the end there's really nothing about any of that that worries him too much and as a result there's nothing that worries me too much either. There was never any doubt this would turn out Happily Ever After for all involved. I could have stopped reading after 100 pages (and I did consider it) and not missed anything important.

Chris himself sounds like a woman throughout and if not for the racy homoerotic scenes, I would have thought he was a she. The dialogue is horribly stiff and unconvincing. The editing is awful, with more than a few errors in the text. An amateur effort by all concerned.

There's nothing for me to recommend except if you want a comforting little yarn that will never excite you for a microsecond. Think of it as "The Notebook" only with two men. If that's your sort of thing, go for it. But it's not for me.

That is all.

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