6/3/2023 0 Comments The bone clocks book reviewWood argues that the novel has absolutely superseded the epic following a suspiciously sectarian and nationally specific hand-off from Paradise Lost to modern fiction. I have quarreled with the theoretical presuppositions underlying James Wood’s review of The Bone Clocks: as I said, I fundamentally disagree with Wood’s claim that the novel as a literary form must treat its characters’ inner life with some version of psychological realism. The following will be evaluative and will mostly interest those who have already read the novel. I will not rehearse the novel’s plot or structure, since they are described at length in many other reviews ( here, for instance). It was about a decade ago that John Banville rightly called Ian McEwan’s Saturday “a dismayingly bad book,” and I am sorry to say that I would make the same judgment about this new novel by another maven of mainstream British fiction.
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