Book Review: Before

Authors

Melanie Springer Mock, George Fox UniversityFollow

Document Type

Book Review

Publication Date

2008

Abstract

Excerpt: "The setting for Irini Spanidou’s third novel, Before, seems promising enough: New York City in the 1970s, SoHo before gentrification, a place on the cusp of change but still, as Spanidou writes in her book’s opening, “dangerous,” beset by crime and sparsely populated by bohemians who party deep into the city’s empty nights. Unfortunately, the novel’s setting, as well as its characters, seem nearly as empty as the streets about which Spanidou writes; as a reader, I must wonder why I am to care about the characters Spanidou creates, or how I am to imagine a setting drawn so faintly."

Comments

Originally published on Curled Up With A Good Book at www.curledup.com. © Melanie Springer Mock, 2008.

http://www.curledup.com/beforeis.htm

Recommended Citation

Mock, Melanie Springer, "Book Review: Before" (2008). Faculty Publications - Department of English. 110.
https://digitalcommons.georgefox.edu/eng_fac/110