‘A serial killer stalks the games’ ... Although I do find myself wondering how much of the book was simply inspired by the title. Having come up with that, did the rest of it all fall into place?

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No sooner had I finished The Circle and raved about it to a friend who is a voracious reader and whose opinion I trust than she had me reading Super Sad True Love Story. There are similarities, which is why I am reviewing them together. Both are set a few minutes into the future and both of them are thoroughly dystopian. Both of them also accelerate inexorably and intensify to something of a climax. Both are equally scary, although paradoxically SSTLS, which on the surface is much more violent and unfathomable, is much harder to take seriously.

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In the process of bringing over old posts from previous sites, I've come across old reviews. They’re not the same as the more recent ones, but I want to preserve them nevertheless. This was originally published on 1 June 2013.

Who is Bailey?

We'll never know. All we know is that Lionel Essro...

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The internet makes it all too easy to go hunting for the information that will make sense of a book or an author, and I am resolved not to do that. At least, not till I have finished this review. From that position of self-imposed ignorance, The Sellout is a brilliantly funny and cutting satire on race in America. Nothing is safe, no-one immune, no taboo out of bounds. Sex, music, drugs, intellectualism, passivity, crime. ...

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I enjoy Dave Eggers' writing a lot, and this was no exception. He has a deft way of filling in the back story that I admire, and his treatment of the two young children seems to me absolutely accurate, poignant and touching and funny. The adventures that these heroes get into are many and varied and...

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