lindawisniewski

This story of twenty-somethings in New York, affluent yet at a loss as to what to do with their lives, is beautifully written, and definitely thought-provoking. What drives us day after day, what is the moral thread running through our lives, are we even aware of one these days?

For Sophie, Charlie and Max, three close friends trying to make sense of their lives, these are questions as challenging as the questions Job asks of God in the Bible. Charlie's point of view is the most intimate, told in the first person. Other sections, in the third person viewpoints of Sophie and Max, are more distanced from the reader, until we are seeing the denouement through Sophie's eyes. It was challenging to follow the shifts in time. Perhaps a little too much literary artfulness for my taste, distracting from the story itself. I prefer to enter the world of the characters and stay there, empathizing with their struggles.

The prose is polished and some of the sentences are quite beautiful, but after spending hours with a book, I like to feel uplifted. Maybe I missed something, but this one didn't do that for me. I'm disappointed.