Perhaps Mason intends the setting to be the 1980s — a veiled reference to AIDS makes anything earlier unlikely — but that would rather blunt the book's immediacy.
Idiosyncratic structure, layout and syntax also blunt the book's appeal, as does its gentle treatment of Boris Berezovsky, a prominent tycoon in the 1990s who now lives in exile in London.
To be blunt: Comic books, in all their pulpy glory, constitute my secret origin.
When Mr. King writes in a coda to this blunt but stunning book that "much here is heartfelt, very little is clever," he is telling the truth.
In this blunt, mocking, silly book, Levandoski (the author of a previous novel, "Going to Chicago") takes aim at standard targets -- hypocrisy, insensitivity, underhandedness.
(Scott) 'The Reluctant Fundamentalist' (No rating, 2 08) Mira Nair's thuddingly crude take on "The Reluctant Fundamentalist," a 2007 novel by the Pakistan-born writer Mohsin Hamid, is blunt where the book is subtle.
As Mr. Harden now acknowledges in "Escape From Camp 14," his blunt, best-selling book about Mr. Shin's life, Mr. Shin had built his own memoir upon a gigantic lie.
(Webster) 'The Reluctant Fundamentalist' (No rating, 2 08) Mira Nair's thuddingly crude take on "The Reluctant Fundamentalist," a 2007 novel by the Pakistan-born writer Mohsin Hamid, is blunt where the book is subtle.
But Robinson was blunter in his book.
