A review by gardnerhere
Great Expectations by Vinson Cunningham

3.0

Cunningham is a wonderful descriptive writer. Renoir, Aaron Copland, even the majestic hip checks of Paul Pierce: he writes about each an all with a keen eye (or ear) for detail. Moments of great and of no import receive the same careful treatment. Here our narrator is walking into a temporary tent structure:

I looked up: the interior of the tent was taut, rising into tight peaks and throwing parabolic shadows, often doubled—darker, lighter, overlapping—onto itself. Bright lights, nearly forensic, were affixed to the poles that held it up. Its surface looked soft. The wind picked up a time or two and ripples shuddered harmlessly across the tent's hueless expanse.

Here, Cunningham has a fine eye and great skill with sentence structure and rhythm. But y'all–we're less than three pages from the end of the novel here. Can we not say, "We walked into the tent" and get to what matters?

Part of my complaint about this novel might just be my distaste for meta-fiction, in which events transpire because they transpired rather than because they are thematically or structurally necessary. I think I would like this better if I conceived of it as a progress between exquisite descriptions, because as a novel of consequential events—it does after all transpire on the campaign trail during the closing months of the first Obama campaign—it doesn't hold up. If moves like a "drifting novel," like say [b:Open City|8526694|Open City|Teju Cole|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1327935192l/8526694._SY75_.jpg|13393712], but the setting promises a very different novel.

All in all, this didn't work for me, but Cunningham's gifts are such that I'm already queued up for his next novel. This one was frustrating, but I believe he has a great book in him.