I don't get it. Like I should probably love this book. I love slow, drawn out character studies. Those are my favorite types of books. And I saw Irving doing that throughout this book, but I was so bored. I didn't care about any of the characters. I didn't care about 90% of what was happening. It took me three weeks to read and I was reading consistently almost every day, which is absolutely wild for me. I just did not care.

If it hadn't been so long and wasted three weeks of my time, I probably would have given this three stars. I did really enjoy his writing style and pacing. It's the kind of pace I enjoy most, where we're just following these people's lives for over a decade. I thought it was well done.

I also liked sections toward the end. I almost started to get the point of the story then and I even found it a little bit interesting! I wouldn't call it enjoyable, necessarily, but it was at least pretty close. The discussion around the Vietnam war and the politics and what it all meant to everyone in the book was the best part to me.

But it just took so long to get there and I did not care. I love a slow book, but I still have to care about what it's building toward and I very much didn't here. I just suffered. For more than 600 pages over three weeks. I probably should've just dnfed.