A review by kainsbird
Falconer by John Cheever

challenging dark medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

“The shaved skulls, Farragut thought, will always be with us. They are easily recognised but impossible to alter or cure. Farragut longed fleetingly for a class structures and benighted hierarchies. They could exploit the shaved heads. Marshack was stupid. Stupidity was his greatest usefulness; his vocation. He was very useful. He was indispensable at greasing machinery and splicing BX cables and he would be a courageous and fierce mercenary in some border skirmish if someone more sophisticated gave the orders to attack. There would be some universal goodness in the man. He would give you a match for your cigarette and save you a seat at the movies. But there was no universality to his lack of intelligence. Marshack might respond to the sovereignty of love, but he could not master geometry and he should not be asked to. Farragut put him down as a killer.”