** spoiler alert ** *Might have insinuations which may be deemed as spoilers*

Over the past few days, I've been reading two novels in tandem. One was Beatrice and Virgil, and the other was Corelli's Mandolin. A friend bought the former for me because he had seen my copy of Life of Pi. Luckily for me, Corelli's Mandolin was so so good that I didn't swear off books upon reading Beatrice and Virgil. (Okay, that is an exaggeration.)

So why did I not like it so much as to give it a 1-star rating (which I avoided doing even to a Coelho book)?

1. Character development. I didn't connect with the narrator/lead character, called Henry, at all. Yes, he was a writer in a phase of writer's block (like me?) but I didn't care for him. I didn't feel empathy for the other character. And while Beatrice and Virgil were charming enough in their own world, the entirety of the novel failed to move me. Yes, even with it's heavy theme of The Holocaust.

2. Plot. To say the least, the plot was slow, if it can be called a plot. The plot was so slow I read the book when I couldn't sleep. I'm all for no-plot or slow-plot novels and movies, but they have to possess a redeeming value somewhere else. Even with a shocking twist at the end, the novel was not redeemed. I couldn't have cared enough whether the lead character died or the world ended.

3. Literary techniques and devices. Okay, this may not be fair to judge the novel like a literary critic. But the author did put so many devices he was begging for a literary assessment. Actually, too many devices as to make the novel seem fake. The play-within-a-novel, story-within-a-story, epilogue-by-way-of-game cards, fill-in-the-blanks ending... And the exhausted and expanded allegory of the Holocaust. He wasn't able to give justice to it, I must say. And honestly, I figured out the allegory so-an-so pages into the book, but the main character, who has written a book on the Holocaust, had to figure it out the hard way. The novel is ambitious, but too much ambition can ruin a book. Just like with people.

The novel has a big theme. And somehow, I wish what Martel had done was simply to stick with the play of Beatrice and Virgil to prove his point of discussing the Holocaust in the realm of fiction and not just non-fiction. But his desire to create an elaborate (too elaborate) work, fell flat. The novel felt like a too-wrought-out allegory.