Judge Savage: A Novel

Rating:
Summary: very good
Review: I found this novel as engrossing as Europa, or more so, and extremely enjoyed its storyline and prose structure.

Rating:
Summary: a smart, gripping, beautifully written novel
Review: parks has written terrific nonfiction about italy, and terrific novels, too, but this is absolutely one of his best--a lively, believable tale, a great protagonist (almost clintonian in his intellect and inability to stay out of trouble), and a really good cast of secondary characters as well. pure pleasure, as a reading experience, something I rarely ever feel, and I read more novels than most. highly and totally recommended.

Rating:
Summary: Best Contemporary Novel in Years
Review: Simply put, this is the best contemporary novel I have read in a few years. Multilayered, complex, and humane, the novel is a tour de force in capturing a man (and family) in crisis. Weaving issues of race, marriage, family, work, and the legal system into a coherent and humane whole, Mr. Parks has produced a fine and gripping work digging into the consciences of his characters to illuminate the messiness that is daily life. In Daniel, Parks has created one of the most indelible characters in modern fiction. There are no easy answers to be had in this book, but the attempts to get there have rarely been so rewarding for readers.

Rating:
Summary: Best Contemporary Novel in Years
Review: Simply put, this is the best contemporary novel I have read in a few years. Multilayered, complex, and humane, the novel is a tour de force in capturing a man (and family) in crisis. Weaving issues of race, marriage, family, work, and the legal system into a coherent and humane whole, Mr. Parks has produced a fine and gripping work digging into the consciences of his characters to illuminate the messiness that is daily life. In Daniel, Parks has created one of the most indelible characters in modern fiction. There are no easy answers to be had in this book, but the attempts to get there have rarely been so rewarding for readers.

Rating:
Summary: Interesting but flawed
Review: This book does have the basic ingredients more or less right. The story is convincing (but not compelling) and the characters are well rendered. However, only the main character is developed sufficiently for the reader to understand his motivations.

I enjoyed the book but was disappointed in two important ways. Firstly, there is no real 'ending', the story just fizzles out, exactly as if Mr. Parks had lost interest in it and wanted to move on to something else. Secondly, an important revelation does not appear; the effect is as if the author couldn't find something plausible and thus chose to simply forget about it.

So deduct a star for the the above two points. Deduct another one for the clumsy style in which dialogue is written without quotation marks. The effect of this is that the reader frequently has to skip back a sentence or two to be sure which character actually spoke. This is a shame because otherwise I would say that Mr. Parks' use of language and style is quite excellent.

In short, a good read somewhat spoiled by its failure to live up to its promise.