Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Awful and unbelievably pretentious. Supposedly a great novel - it's incomprehensibe to me why a number of newspaper literary critics thought so and it's mind-boggling it has won two major literary awards (a fact that only makes the novel more depressing in reality compared with the reviews, since you have been led to expect something wondrous). Egan's attempts to be wry, clever and 'with it' - in this instance, the focus is on the American music industry, and the trials, shenanigans and viewpoints of some individuals within it and its periphery - leave you feeling nothing at all for her characters (because they're all narcissistic, ego-inflated bores). Her failed efforts at being clever amount to nothing more than sophistry, and two particular scenes/chapters highlighted by many reviewers to date as good are uninspired and tiresome. These involve a chapter in the form of a PowerPoint presentation, detailing in schematic/diagrammatic form a family matrix and its individuals' views and connections; and an article written in the style of David Foster Wallace, including - of course - footnotes and digressions galore (arguably an homage, more in truth a dull-witted effort, with none of the brilliance or ingenuity or riffing, clever tangents that Wallace so effortlessly produced in his fiction and journalism). You keep on hoping it will get better, but sadly, miserably, it doesn't. Plodding stuff that will bore you to tears and, unless your proclivities include watching paint dry or wallpaper peel, I'd stay clear of this abysmal, contrived effort.