The Second Coming
Ambitious but uneven and exhausting ... Hallberg is an intelligent writer, but he’s a wild and frequently sloppy one. His narratives don’t click into gear; his curveball only sometimes makes it over the plate ... There is little sense of momentum; the pages never turn themselves. It is so intensely written that it gave me a headache, as if I had been grinding my teeth. I was glad when it was over.
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Overstuffed ... The real problem with this novel... is Hallberg’s relentless urge to digress, to lather moments with excess observations and observations with superfluous verbiage ... And for much of the book’s impressive length, the plot moves forward so slowly and with so little urgency that some of the more dispensable flashbacks struck me as almost vindictive ... Are there flashes of brilliance here? More than flashes; whole storms of genius. But my irritation is piqued by the fact that so many wonderful, witty, poignant sections are buried in this lumpy novel.
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Hefty ... After hundreds of pages of caustic witticisms, I would have given anything for someone to speak like a real human being ... The novel is in part about the transformative journey these people take to finally arrive someplace honest. But there’s a lot of falseness to indulge before they get there.
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