Jonathan Franzen, in his post about the novel, notes the absence of a "melodramatic moral event". The most significant public events happen off the page, in between the chapters.
Jonathan Franzen, in his post about the novel, notes the absence of a "melodramatic moral event".
Certainly alarming things have happened before in Mr. Ford's fiction, but there is a stage-managed quality to the melodramatic events in "A Multitude of Sins".
Ms. Oates makes no effort to ground these absurdly melodramatic events in a plausible psychological matrix.
An air of unreality suffused even the most workaday details, as if we were plotting not the death of a friend but the itinerary of a fabulous trip that I, for one, never quite believed we'd ever really take". It is a measure of Ms. Tartt's complete assurance and skill as a writer that these shocking, melodramatic events are made to seem plausible to the reader as well.
These tales, set in the desert Southwest, revolve around ordinary people staidly facing melodramatic events yet aching for a way to break free of their natural reticence.
The story of the Florida recount has raised interest to the level that accrued to these dramatic and melodramatic events, gathering us together before a coast-to-coast proscenium, once more an audience communally obsessed, privately agape.
Even the many melodramatic events in August's story are related in a polite, uninflected manner.
The distancing device, in focusing on the moments of crisis, has deprived us of the relief that ordinary, day-to-day life can bring, and in the melodramatic events and revelations of the ending there emerges a kind of excess, revealing an intriguing tension in the Bergman-Ullmann sensibility.
It's an intelligent, consistently involving thriller with the kind of unexpected melodramatic events that crop up in all US elections.
