Rating: 
Summary: A Big Waste of Time
Review: After recently visiting Atlanta, I was looking forward to a good story and I was wrong!!. This book is deadly, too long, the characters are boring, and the words sometimes are so repetitive. Give me a good ol' fashion true southern novel any day.
Rating:
Summary: disappointing
Review: i very much looked forward to reading this book. but i found it tedious in its detail and repetitive to the point of frustration. entire pages could be skipped without loosing the (weak) plot. and after all that, it just ended without a whimper.
Rating:
Summary: Wait for the movie, save 20$, and be just as disappointed
Review: Trite, offensive rant by an affluent white man which, after 742 grueling pages, reveals itself to ultimately be about an affluent black man discovering his true status as a "brother."Msr. Wolfe is trying to prove a point, but I defy anyone, including the master himself, to tell me what it is. Pure drivel top to bottom. All praise to Zeus aside, this book is AWFUL!!!
Rating: 
Summary: Loved the first 650 pages...disappointed by the ending
Review: Tom Wolfe captures entirely the look and feel of life in the late 20th century. His descriptions conjure images so exact, it seems like we've actually met these people and been to these places (and in some repects, maybe we have). Hundreds of pages into the novel, I was still captivated by the story, curious to see how the characters would eventually converge. Wolfe is so acurate in his portrayal of this range of characters, its no wonder its taken more than ten years to write the book. The last 100 pages were such a letdown, I'm lobbying my bookclub to drop this from our 1999 reading list. After carefully developing the characters and story for more than 600 pages, the totally implausible ending seems even more ridiculous. I enjoyed the majority of the book, but the lackluster ending ruined the experience and I can not recommend the book to others. Read "Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil" if you're interested in a modern profile of a southern city.
Rating:
Summary: A genuine dissapointment
Review: Wolfe clearly wanted to create larger than life characters pushed into a larger than life situation. Instead, he created one dimensional, completely unbelievable characters running around in a far fetched, cliched drama that was hard to believe in the beginning, boring in the middle, and plain flat at the end. Doubly frustrating was his clear intention to write a sequel to that mess, no doubt to cast some light on what was supposed to be a catchy but unclear ending. Give this one a big miss.
Rating: 
Summary: Great book right up until a so-so end
Review: The book lived up to its' hype right up till the end. However, it seemed like Mr. Wolfe simply ran out of gas or interest in the project and came to a very unfortunate ending. The central characters simply changed in unreasonable ways in what seemed to be simply a quick way to tie all the loose ends together. In fact, the central character is really not heard from at the end of the book and is only discussed by secondary characters. This was a very unfortunate end to what was otherwise a very solid book. I really liked 90% of it, but it left me almost bitter at the end.
Rating: 
Summary: Mediocre writing of a somewhat fun story
Review: This is one book which could have been written in half the pages - think of the trees we could have saved! While there are high points and some wonderful satire, overall the book becomes tiresome and redundant. It's entertaining if you want a book which can be skimmed through over a rainy weekend and provide some satire, humor and interesting, if predictable, characters. This is not a piece of good literature that requires reading every line. Wait until the paperback comes out if you want to buy it.
Rating:
Summary: First and last book to read of Tom Wolfe
Review: Very little of interest in this book except how the rich live. I went through one chapter reading the right-hand pages only and still knew what was going on. I only kept reading because I always try to finish a book especially after paying the price of the book.
Rating:
Summary: Inane and irrelevant, should not have been published!
Review: This massive missive is racist, bigoted, bloated and boring. Frankly, it has absolutely no saving feature. If not received as a Christmas gift from a desperate family, I would not have had the misfortune of reading it! The plot is thin, the characters thin, the dialog grinding and tedious, the entire text tedious. How this book and author were acclaimed is not understandable. His previous text, Bonfire of the Vanities, was only marginally better. Why Tom Wolfe? New York, I guess.......
Rating:
Summary: Great book, dissapointing ending
Review: I just finsihed the book after the book after a marathon reading session at 4:00 am. I found the book entertaining, but the ending was just too neat. The characters all came together in end in a very neat, TV like fashion. The books "lived happily efter after" was not believable. I felt that after reading 750+ pages I would feel more satisfaction in the end.
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