Lost Echoes
Joe R. Lansdale
Read December 2008
Copies borrowed from the Cedar Falls and Ramsey County (White Bear Lake branch) Public Libraries
Essay written Saturnday, February 28th, 2009
This was the last of four books I checked out from the Cedar Falls library when I was there for Thanksgiving. I knew my parents would be coming up to Minnesota to visit me three weeks later and I could give these back to my mom to return for me without incurring late fees. Not that the late fees would have affected me -- the books were checked out on my mom's card.
I didn't quite make it. I was only half done with Lost Echoes when my folks visited and I had to relinquish the books. Luckily, the Ramsey County Library also had a copy (four copies, actually) of this one, so I requested it and picked it up and finished reading the novel that way. I don't like doing this, reading a novel in two different copies. I did this with God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater by Kurt Vonnegut, also due to a trip to Iowa. It's not natural. Lost Echoes at least the two copies of the book were the same printing; same cover, same number of pages, all that. Not so much with the Vonnegut. But then, Vonnegut is a quality enough author that his books will have more than one printing.
Lost Echoes was okay, as supernatural crime novels go. Superfluous swearing though. I know I sound like a Puritan or something, but it seems to me that this author was trying so hard to make his dialogue sound authentic that he went off the deep end and filled his characters' mouths with sh*ts and f*cks that were gratuitous. People don't really talk like that, except in the movies. Yes, some people talk like that. But not everybody. Maybe everybody swears once in a while, but not everyone swears all the time. In this book, everyone swore all the time. Silly.
Good plot and interesting. Unique and a nicely painted picture of Texas. That's as much as you can really ask for.
Back To Books
|
