The Book Stacks

The story opens in the year 2020, with a romantic/erotic dream sequence and waking of one lonely sixty-six year-old widower Chris Vadia, a retired professional musician, and his sullen celibate perspective due to his wife dying fifteen years earlier. After establishing the time period and showing the impossibility of replacing human intimacy with the high-tech devices of the period, we flashback fifty years to 1970.

To be honest, this was my second time starting this book. I mention this because the reason I put it down the first time might be a reason that you, the reader, might be put off from reading it: description.

This book has a lot of description. There is no getting around it. There is a lot of action, as this is the story of someone’s life, but it’s not all action in the explosions and shoot out sense. There is also dialogue, but it by no means dominates as the main focus.

I am by no means saying this is a bad thing. However, if could put you off as a reader. If you are not someone who tolerates description well, you will likely be challenged with this book. But if you approach this book with the expectation that it reads like a biography, then you should have no problem.

Doing book reviews and learning to look for more intricate details of creating a story helped me through the large descriptions. However, at a few points, I did wonder where it was all going. I felt a certain lack of understanding what ‘it all’ was about, but I also didn’t go in with any expectation of what kind of book it would be.

The description serves a good purpose in the beginning, as the main character’s world is very limited in then. Learning the fine details of what is around him is all he has left. That makes it so when action does happen it is as jarring to the reader as it is to the main character. Oliva does a good job of easing you into the main character’s world before ‘testing the water’ with actions that are almost involuntary to the main character.

The description also helps in that this book crosses many miles and covers many settings. They are clearly distinguished from each other and rich with details that make the world more real to the reader.

Overall, the thing to know when considering this book is that it reads like a memoir or biography. That is why this review focuses so much on the description – description is what dominates this book. There are sections of detail and even events that could arguably be taken out, but that’s somewhat like arguing whether someone’s life events are important or not. They are all part of the story.

If you like biographies and/or personal tales of history like I do, then you should read this book. However, if you need a lot of action and dialogue, this might not be the book for you.