Echo House

Rating:
Summary: Plenty of sublety and nuance - not much of a story
Review: I only slogged through this snoozer because I had read A Dangerous Friend by Just and thought it was very good. Therefore, surely this book would eventually become interesting to read rather than the chore it proved to be. Not so.

I found this to be a book that doesn't do a good job of developing its characters or its story. Even though I'm interested in Washington and its inside baseball, this book just didn't tell enough to be interesting. Everything was vague and cloaked in secrecy and dullness. Not a very good formula for a book in my view. The author is clearly a gifted wordsmith, but he failed me as a "storysmith" in this effort. I'd recommend you skip it.

Rating:
Summary: Melancholy in Washington
Review: Melancholy in Washington is a good description of this very well done novel by Ward Just. It sets a very accurate tone in chronicling the adventures of a multigenerational family of
power brokers and their families and especially their women. Having lived in Washington for nearly 40 years, I see many of the characters in real people I have known here.

Rating:
Summary: Echoes in an empty house
Review: There's lots of style to this story. Just is deft at creating scenes and then sliding in some major piece of the story almost as an aside. You have to wait until the next chapter to find out how and why the big event happened. I enjoyed the snippets of life in behind-the-scenes Washington. The problem is that they're only snippets. We never find out what really drives these men or how they really feel about anything or anyone. That's a shame because it's almost impossible for the reader not to care about Alex and Alec. As notied in one of the "professional" reviews above: the government players come and go but the system is forever. But that fact alone doesn't make for good storytelling. And if you don't live within 50 miles of DC, I can't imagine there would be anything in this book to keep you interested.