You Can't Go Home Again

It has taken me almost a month to read this long, long, long book, but I am finally finished. I liked it more than this three star rating says, but not enough to give it anything more. Why? It was good writing, but it was absurdly wordy. On and on Wolfe writes about every person his main character meets in his life, every place he visits, every conversation he exchanges with another, and to what point? It's a huge book with virtually no plot; fundamentally it is a book with lots and lots of pretty writing.

An editor, a good one, could have easily cut this book in half, but again to what point? It still would lack a plot, and lots of the pretty words would be gone.

The main character in the book is an author and he proposes to write as truly as he can, which is a noble goal. Wolfe seems undecided about where this book was going and just seems to have decided to write down, in detail, everything that happens to his character. In the end, I felt, oddly, both empty and bloated.