Since this posting area has become a forum for Obama supporters....riddle me this batman...why is it that Obama can only discuss that we need change, not his ideas for the change? Yeah....because he doesnt have high paid monkey suits like Bush to tell him what to say yet. Change my butt. Puppets....all of em.
It’s Fiction—For Real
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"Amberton Parker.
"Public heterosexual.
"Private homosexual."
If you can abide the style—Frey was plainly frightened by a comma as a child and still avoids them whenever possible—you still have the author's miniseries sensibility to contend with. There's the insecure Mexican-American domestic (ashamed of her big thighs) who works for a witchy rich lady in Pasadena. There's the wino who wants to do just one good deed to redeem his life. There's the young couple that falls afoul of a biker gang. There is enough material here for four or five potboilers, but Frey, spellbound by the idea of an epic mosaic, can't stop himself. Readers may decide otherwise.
The sad thing is, "Bright Shiny Morning" could have been better. When he has a subject that engages him, Frey can write. A chapter about the Los Angeles freeways gives each of them a distinct personality, a mythology, a fabled history. Frey seems genuinely engaged with his material and, as a result, his prose comes to life in a way that it rarely does elsewhere in this literary pile-up. He might not get a majestic saga out of traffic patterns, but it could have been a lot more fun to read a modest book on something that truly obsessed him. Instead, we got a book stuffed with depthless characters, plots we already knew by heart and a writer in way over his head. Frey opens his novel with a disclaimer: "Nothing in this book should be considered accurate or reliable." OK, that's funny. But it doesn't get him off the hook. Novels aren't supposed to be factually verifiable, but they should ring true. This one doesn't.
© 2008
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