Speciman Days a total letdown

And if all that posting and ranting wasn't bad enough...

My favourite author Michael Cunningham has let me down terribly.

Shame on you, Michael.

And shame on all the people listed at the back of the book as his readers and collaborators. Has he succumbed to the hype and surrounded himself with sycophantic hangers on?

It would appear so. Or else his mates don't know shit about structure, plot, etc.

Do not buy it. Do not read it even. Unless you don't believe me. I would understand if you didn't. I don't believe me.

I read a New Zealand review of it which says:

Specimen Days is a genre-bending, haunting, and transformative ode to life in our greatest city-a work of surpassing power and beauty by one of the most original and daring writers at work today.

No it's not. It's a pile of stinking fish poo.

Funny how they always say 'original and daring' when they're too scared to say 'this is a pile of stinking fish poo'.

I borrowed it from the library and read it over three nights - it's in three parts - and when I was discussing it with Jersey Girl on the phone last night I had already forgotten the middle section.

It's that poor. Compared to The Hours, which was riveting, A Home at the End of the World, which was heart-breaking and mesmerising, and Flesh and Blood, which was an unforgettable portrait of how an unhappy man can destroy a family.

I'm not even going to bother reviewing it, apart from saying putting together an appalling pastiche of immigrant Irish life, the pre-menopausal hallucinations of a cop with a PhD in psychology (!?!), and an android who falls in love with a lizard from another planet, pretending it's all connected in some really deep way by setting it all in the bit of New York that aspiring writers want to live in, and calling all the characters by variations of the same names is rubbish. Even if the Walt Whitman quotes in the text are nice.

Of course they are. They're Walt effin' Whitman.

What is the grass? The grass is life you muppet!! Even the child knows that.

I'm not falling by the wayside lightly. I own every one of his books except this one.

Maybe I'm not getting it.

I don't think so. Even when I don't get it, if it's good, I like it without understanding why. Plus JG didn't like it and we can't both be wrong about a book.

Goodbye Michael. It's been great. I even enjoyed the lazy tome, Land's End: A Tour of Provincetown about your summer pad. In fact, it inspired my blog in ways, back when I had a summer. Maybe you should do like me and re-enter the real world for a bit. Get your edge back.

I hereto announce that Joseph Boyden is the new Michael Cunningham in my life and he's coming to the Halifax Writers' Fest next week so I shall tell him that.

Buy the Three Day Road. It's fab.

But you knew that already, as it was my favourite book last year.