Book Review

Just finished reading The Golden Era by Gore Vidal (in Portuguese). Awful book. Stodge from beginning to end. I received it for Christmas 2004 but, as I could only face a couple of pages a day, only finished it now.

It's about as good a read as (imagine) Nicholas Nickleby translated by Dostoevsky: too many characters, over-elaborate phrases. I was half way through the book before I understood who the major character is. A lot of it is opinionated rubbish, particularly the introduction of the author himself as a minor character who metamorphoses into the star of the anti-climatic final chapter. Even the explanations and justifications in the epilogue fail to compensate the reader for the purgatory of having read that far.

I can't believe that the translator is to blame. I only occasionally found myself translating back into English to find the correct translation for non-sensical phrases, which considering the historical context and obscurity of many references is quite an achievement. She successfully reflected a different style in the epilogue to the main text.

All in all, a complete waste of time.