The book has a dedication, a short prayer, several bible verses and several stanzas from a poem. Then you'd think the story starts, but noooooooo. then there is a Foreward.

And it's the Foreward that stopped me and made me want to add it to the list. Not the prayer to Mary or the lines from Whitman. But in his comments, the author opines that a character "like most people today - is convinced that fame is an end in and of itself."

Oh really? MOST people? Based on what polling data (sorry, just watched an early episode of "The West Wing" this morning.) Really? Based on what information, other than a handful of Western countries where a small number overdo it.

I'm willing to bet (and this will no doubt go in the Foreward of my next novel ( (heh) that there are villages, towns, settlements, cities, counties, communes, entire communities where "fame" doesn't show up on the scale. that there are possibly at least oh, a few dozen, or hundred, or thousands, or millions of people for whom tilling the land, having babies, caring for the ancestors, telling their stories, singing, dancing, warring with rivals takes precedence of "fame" as a goal. This sort of short-sighted dumbass claim goes with those other ones about how "all over the world X is being celebrated". Why all over the world, Christmas cards with Currier and Ives illos arrive (when half of the planet, including lots of places where it doesn't snow, but where they celebrate this birth. From the easy stupidity of baseball's "World Series" to the "Miss Universe Pageant" (yeah, I know, hear you back there, oh we WISH), there are very few "universals" in life, and i dislike the arrogance of claims like this to the max.

"Like most people today"? Maybe it's true (as someone said this weekend when I was bitching about this) of the two people you asked, but I'm willing to bet that while, no doubt, I know "people today" who would happy to be famous" I don't believe any of them consider it "an end in itself". Yes, there are "celebrities" who exist solely to be in front of a tv camera. So? That's not "most people today" and if this author believes this, I'm guessing he needs some new, less shallow, more intelligent friends. Or maybe to move to a city, country, community where people are normal.

If I'd managed to get past that, by the way (and please note, this is not a spoiler, the man himself puts it in this Foreward (I have to wonder how many novels have forewards?) I then would have encountered another character in this book who kills "if he has good reason" among these reasons being to bring back the attention of the woman he loves.

PW calls this book "a scintillating parable about shallowness, greed and celebrity worship". I'm so sorry.

And the hits just keep on coming.