RIVERHEAD Intimacies

Her understated style describes different interactions between the characters makes a clean smooth read.

What could have been a mildly interesting novel, similar to Rachel Cusk's deadpan trilogy, quickly becomes unreadable. I'm no grammatical purist; sometimes playing with grammar pays off. But every third sentence in this book is a run-on sentence, because the author seems to have no idea how to use commas, semicolons, dashes or periods. This doesn't read like a literary device. It reads like a massive editorial fiasco and the result is a discordant, tuneless drone that's impossible to parse.

the entire time i read this book, i was immediately inside the narrative, entirely removed from my own world. and yet now when i try to tell you about the book, i cannot explain what it was about this book that impacted me. if you are looking for a book with a strong plot, this is not it. and yet there is an arc to the storyline, sure. but it's secondary to how this book makes you feel. most of the time i felt quietly suspended and yet entirely engaged. how is that even possible? such is the power of this book, at least for me. i chose this book because president obama suggested it and i've come to learn over the years that he chooses strong books. this book is definitely one of them and i was dismayed to find the author is relatively new and there is only one other book of hers on the market. and now that i've written this review i see that i've left you with no idea as to what this book is "about", but rather i am hopefully leaving you with the impression of a wonderful reading experience. a strong, quiet, intelligent narrative.

This book is like a series of connected vignettes. There isn’t really any plot, just minutely drawn moments in stories that interweave over the course of two months. While some of the writing is beautiful - as other reviewers have pointed out, the use of commas where semi-colons or periods would have been more appropriate was extremely distracting. I could not get immersed in the story because I kept wondering about the editing (or lack thereof).Some of the passages, especially at the beginning, about the role of an interpreter were fantastic. And the setting of The Hague and the International Criminal Court was very interesting. As an attorney, it bothered me that in one of the story lines, the main character interpreted for both the Court and the defense team during the trial. I kept thinking about all of the conflict of interest issues that situation would raise, and like the grammar problems, it was just another distracting detail that I found made it hard to really enjoy the story.

As a long time teacher of English, I am very surprised that a book filled with comma splices would be published. Why didn’t her editor take care of these? They are grammatically incorrect and, for me at least, very distracting.