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A review by dee9401
Farewell, My Lovely by Raymond Chandler
3.0
Farewell five stars? Chandler's second novel, my third of his I read and my first non-5-star rating. I really liked his first novel, The Big Sleep and then found The Long Goodbye, published 14 years later, to be an excellent read and hardboiled social commentary. I was looking forward to Farewell, My Lovely and left not upset but not happy.
The hardboiled lingo he used so well in The Big Sleep was fleshed out with too many descriptive words in this book. It reminded me of advice I received in a writing class about how much description to use and how you should hit so many senses with each sentence. The crisp, rapid-fire pace of his other books, and the genre in general, is slowed down so much that it was a chore to read some sections. When Chandler dropped into dialogue mode, his touch returned, but the narrative never matched the pace of his characters talking to each other. While that was my bigger beef, I wasn't as interested in the plot line in this novel. It seemed forced, less believable and with too many two-dimensional characters.
If you want to read Chandler, start with The Long Goodbye. So far, that's been my favorite book of his and it earned a spot on my favorites bookshelf.
The hardboiled lingo he used so well in The Big Sleep was fleshed out with too many descriptive words in this book. It reminded me of advice I received in a writing class about how much description to use and how you should hit so many senses with each sentence. The crisp, rapid-fire pace of his other books, and the genre in general, is slowed down so much that it was a chore to read some sections. When Chandler dropped into dialogue mode, his touch returned, but the narrative never matched the pace of his characters talking to each other. While that was my bigger beef, I wasn't as interested in the plot line in this novel. It seemed forced, less believable and with too many two-dimensional characters.
If you want to read Chandler, start with The Long Goodbye. So far, that's been my favorite book of his and it earned a spot on my favorites bookshelf.