This was one of the most boring books I have read in a long time. The back of it made me think of The Quarry by Iain Banks or The Big Chill. Instead it took those story lines, getting together old friends for a death as in The Big Chill, or pending death as in the Quarry, but populated the story with one dimensional characters that were so boring and pretentious, that only an academic or a NYT book reviewer could slog through it. For anyone else, don't bother. ( )

I don't know how to rate this. It was very strange and reminiscent of the kind of oddball humour of an Iris Murdoch novel - a charismatic figure with a group of devoted acolytes, financial and emotional hijinks, a kind of narrative unsteadiness.

I think it's about the kind of seminal relationships that we form in college and that make us who we are. As we grow older, we might choose what to keep.......and what to leave behind.

After an extensive internal struggle over what to rate this book, I settled on two stars.

I can't even tell you how much I hated the beginning of this book. So obnoxious. So pretentious. Do people like Ned and Doug really exist? Unfortunately yes, because they are the kind of people I have to deal with at my job. They think they're smart. They think they're funny. They use big words to try to confuse other people. They think they're better than everybody else. Honestly, I get enough of it at work. I don't really need to read about it when I get home. Maybe that's a reason why I disliked this book.

I would now like to give you a rundown of some of the vocabulary words used in the book. Exophthalmic. Burgomaster. Miasma. Hinterland. Patrician. More? Okay. Baronial. Weltanschauung. Cineastes. Aoroi. Derisory. The list goes on. At certain points, it seems like Rush just consulted a thesaurus with no regard for common usage. I love words -- I have a BA in Linguistics, after all -- but I had to step away from this book several times because I couldn't even handle the vocabulary.

And then the plot. Or the lack of plot, for the majority of the book. Men talking. Men reminiscing. Men sulking. A wife. An ex-girlfriend. Nothing cohesive. The best plot summary I could think of was "Old guys using big words at a funeral." Honestly, I stopped worrying about the plot about halfway through. I concentrated on Nina, my favorite character, and took the book as a distraction, or just something to read to relax before bed. I enjoyed it much more.

I think this book was probably intended for a demographic that I do not fit.

[Insert obligatory "I received this book for free in exchange for an honest review" disclaimer here.] ( )

A terrible disappointment. I have so enjoyed his other books, but this one felt half-baked. I disliked all the characters, and kept waiting for the story to begin. It was actually laughably bad at points. ( )

This was one of the most boring books I have read in a long time. The back of it made me think of The Quarry by Iain Banks or The Big Chill. Instead it took those story lines, getting together old friends for a death as in The Big Chill, or pending death as in the Quarry, but populated the story with one dimensional characters that were so boring and pretentious, that only an academic or a NYT book reviewer could slog through it. For anyone else, don't bother. ( )