This is one of the stirring books I have read in recent times. Maybe old-age is catching up to me and I am becoming sentimental but still Seymour has a way of giving blended and blistered edges to his characters. Nobody is described as being larger-than-life, and at the end of the story pragmatism rules. When I was younger, I used to avoid his books like the plague, and his writing style used to give me splitting headaches. Now I am able to appreciate the melancholy in his writing, and the feeling appeals to my sense of liking. The characters behave like you and I will, and never are any cinematic qualities brought out. For that end, Seymour remains a true critic of his own work. Seymour has often been accused of as being formulaic, but then who is not? If the formula is going to keep me gripped then I do not mind, give me excess of it!
