Campbell Andrews’s Reviews > Buckeye > Status Update

this reads like a novel written by instruction, a kit you can buy at the hobby store. it’s paint-by-numbers.

for every incisive insight (“He’d become a guest in his own life”, page 185) there’s an anachronism (“it became clear that they were all… fighting to protect a way of life that didn’t include everyone back home”, page 187)

“Let’s just say it wasn’t a Norman Rockwell painting”

WAY too knowing — it’s 1944, Rockwell was known as an illustrator who did magazine covers. This is an elbow in the ribs of the reader, when “It wasn’t the cover of the Saturday Evening Post” would’ve sufficed.

infidelity is boring

all very rote now

there’s something of Amor Towles here but the sex is telegraphed and the attitudes often anachronistic