Jason's review
Beautiful Children: A Novel
by Charles Bock
Jason's review
Beautiful Children: A Novel by Charles Bock
Jason's review
rating:
(Reprinted from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com]. I am the original author of this review, as well as the owner of CCLaP; it is not being reprinted here illegally.)
This is one of two books I've recently read that I didn't care for enough to finish, but weren't exactly terrible so didn't want to include them in my snarky "Too Awful to Finish" series of essays; it's the high-profile Beautiful Children by Charles Bock, which I actually read electronically because of his publisher Random House giving away the digital version recently as an online promotion. It's a supposedly edgy and gritty look at the various losers and junkies that make up the underclass of society, set in this case in Las Vegas but really examining the wrong side of the tracks of any large city; but I'm warning you, this book is "edgy and gritty" the same way a movie on the Lifetime Channel is edgy and gritty, and those who are not necessarily shocked by ...more
This is one of two books I've recently read that I didn't care for enough to finish, but weren't exactly terrible so didn't want to include them in my snarky "Too Awful to Finish" series of essays; it's the high-profile Beautiful Children by Charles Bock, which I actually read electronically because of his publisher Random House giving away the digital version recently as an online promotion. It's a supposedly edgy and gritty look at the various losers and junkies that make up the underclass of society, set in this case in Las Vegas but really examining the wrong side of the tracks of any large city; but I'm warning you, this book is "edgy and gritty" the same way a movie on the Lifetime Channel is edgy and gritty, and those who are not necessarily shocked by ...more
