It’s been a long time since I read the NY Times book review. Chalk it up to business and professional disinterest — I never have enough time to read everything I’m supposed to, and most of what I read feeds what I might write about for Jacket Copy at the LA Times. But I can’t spend my Jacket Copy days writing about the NY Times, so I’ve been giving it a pass. Until today.
I’m so glad I did. Because Tom Bissell’s review of Season of Ash by Jorge Volpi is not to be missed. After explaining, “What it is not: surprising, involving or at all interesting. What it lacks: any occasions of arresting language or appreciable drama,” and elaborating on its other faults, Bissell writes, “That more or less ends the laudatory portion of this review.”
The negativity seems, from the review, well-deserved — but it’s the deadpan delivery that kills me.
But hey, aside from a big, promising yet not-great work in translation, I have to wonder: where’d the fiction go?
