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Generosity

An Enhancement
Apr 12, 2014vansce rated this title 4 out of 5 stars
This is a fresh, inventive work. It is not a great story and the characters are all like delicate china dolls teetering on the edges of high shelves. It is the author's device of having a narrator/himself comment throughout that fascinated me. Not at all like the old practice of addressing "dear reader", these just barge in as first person interjections. They slowly increase in both frequency and importance until at the very end, it is the most important thing--the author's relationship to/comfort with his principal character. As a whole it is almost a creative essay on fiction, its role, the writing of it, its difficulties and the intellectual life of the novelist. There is also a moral tussle with a particular area of current science that threatens to reduce humanity. The book is not without humor. My best chuckle came with Powers' creation and treatment of '"Oona", obviously Oprah.