Absent Friends

by SJ Rozan

Saturday, February 4, 2006

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This tale concerns a group of friends who grew up on Staten Island in the 1970s and mostly takes place in late 2001 in New York just after the attacks on the World Trade Center. I was looking forward to reading it but in the end felt disappointed.

Despite the fact that I’ve loved and adored Rozan’s other books I never really got into the swing of this one and the plot always felt a little clunky and culminated in an ending that seemed very so-so to me. Just didn’t seem to be as well written as I’d hoped. And though I found some of the sections dealing with life in Manhattan after September 11th interesting I didn’t find them as emotionally involving as I thought I should and it started to feel voyeuristic reading the book.

I guess I’d just hoped for better.