Big If

Rating:
Summary: almost...
Review: This good book would have been better IF:
1) The only character who really mattered, Naubek, had been dealt with in as great a detail as a real-estate agent, a potential hippy assassin who is whacked out and Lydia Felker, who I saw as Ruth Buzzy from Laugh In.
2) The Lloyd Felker story line was a bit more clear. I actually wasn't sure if he was alive or dead.
3) The writer, a fine one, worried a little more about his readers and less about his literary intentions.
Actually, I don't feel as if I wasted my precious reading time. Costello did a great job of developing characters, except Naubek. But, after some reviews I read, I was expecting much more. I thought the Commissariat of the Enlightenment was superior.

Rating:
Summary: Skip it
Review: What a disappointment. I cared nothing about the charecters, and the plot never showed up. If you want to read about the government, pick up Clancy.

Rating:
Summary: Women in Black
Review: With this book blurbed by Franzen and Foster Wallace you know sort of what you're in for: verbal brilliance, unusual settings, darker humor. Costello does not disappoint. His novel about Vi, a Secret Service agent assigned to an unnamed Vice President in the midst of a Presidential campaign, also tells of Vi's larger family, her collegues, their 'down time' lives, and a refracted view of America. While Costello seems to fit right into a certain subcategory of novelists (afore mentioned Franzen and Wallace--what category would that be labelled I wonder?) he isn't a clone. He has a more narrative driven, accessible novel here, one where you get to care about some of the characters; certainly he is very very talented with the language; quick wit.