Set This House on Fire

I must confess, this wasn’t the book I was looking for when I wandered out into the stacks at the main branch of the Brooklyn Public Library with my sights set on William Styron’s Sophie’s Choice. (I’d always enjoyed the movie immensely and wanted, finally, to give the author his due.) Unfortunately, my sights were not to be satisfied: Sophie’s Choice was out; and so, I settled for Styron’s Set This House on Fire, a book I’d never even heard of and consequently knew nothing about.

In spite of the rave reviews and blurbs on both the front and back covers of the book, I shouldn’t have bothered.

There are certainly moments and entire passages that let a reader understand why Styron has the reputation he has. But these are too show more few and far between.

My honest opinion? Styron could’ve told this story much more effectively as a short—or at least as a novella. It didn’t need (or merit) a novel of over 500 pages in small print. And why his three principal characters, all American, insist on inserting the odd Italian word into their dialogue is entirely beyond me. (Moreover, I suspect—though, lacking reference books at this point, can’t confirm—that Styron’s Italian leaves a lot to be desired. Most of it reads like transcriptions directly from the English.)

Will I still hunt down Sophie’s Choice? No doubt. But I’ll now hunt it down with a skeptical eye—and in the hope that Styron will have enlisted the help of a better editor than he had for Set This House on Fire.

RRB
3/31/13
Brooklyn, NY show less

1020 Set This House on Fire, by William Styron (read 31 Aug 1969) I found this book long and not interesting, but I did no post-reading note on it so I cannot tell you much more. But I well remember I was distinctly unimpressed by characters I did not admire cavorting in Italy, as I recall.

Three and a half stars.