The Castle of Crossed Destinies – 2/5 Stars I knew it. I knew I was not going to like this one, and I made it about 20 pages in before I truly understood that the book was going to annoy. That’s a lot of annoying for a book that’s only 120 pages long. So the setup of this novel is that a group of people find themselves holed up in a tavern and unable to speak. This setup, which plays upon especially The Decameron, but […]
This shit about being fearless before death ain’t got no quality. How could you say you were fearless about leaving the party, even in stir—even franks and rice taste good when you’re hungry, even an iron bar feels good to touch, it feels good to sleep.
This novel is about a prison called “Falconer” and not about a falconer. So it’s not about a boy and his hawk, which I thought was possible, or a metaphor for a loss of center or control in the world ala an allusion to “The Second Coming” by Yeats, which I also thought. Nor does it remind me much of John Cheever’s short fiction, of which I have read a fair amount. Also, I had a student years ago who really liked a John Cheever […]