Rating: 
Summary: A Reviewa Negativa: What Annie Ain't
Review: There _are_ such things as sins. The average young confessional writer, conspicuously disaffected and with studied irony, denies that fact immediately prior to celebrating one or more of his own transgressions. Which makes confessional fiction unconvincing, dull, even irritating. (Note: It is all right for the reader to notice this contemporary hypocrisy, and to notice that it manifests itself in a turgid unredeemed depressiveness; reflexive self-indulgent prose; a defiant amoralism; and, most glaringly, inattentiveness to details outside of the prosaic meandering of the witless self-obsessed narrators who parade their neurosis in an emotional freak-show.)
Then there is Annie Dillard, and she would be different.
Rating:
Summary: Stunning
Review: This is definitely not work that I would usually read for pleasure. However, it was entirely pleasurable. Beautiful images, words, skill, observation, and construction. I both laughed and, unexpectedly, cried. Perfect contemplative reading.
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