A review by abastone
Snow Falling on Cedars by David Guterson

2.0

There is a beautiful story under this heavy burdensome book, just waiting to come out. But it's held in check by overdone descriptions and details. Why, for example, do we need to know the size of the deceased's penis or how his sex life was faring the morning before his fateful boat ride? In fact, every time a penis was mentioned (seemingly frequently in this book), I thought, "Why?" What a stupid detail to include. These kind of excerpts distract in a huge way and really should have been struck by a good editor. The best parts were the simple descriptions (often of the landscape) that let the reader picture the scene without the author's verbose interference. I ended up skimming a lot and was subsequently underwhelmed.

My overall impression of the book was just that the author kind of had a thing for penises.