It should not be so hard to write both poetry and fiction. Both arts, after all, make use of the same materials, words and punctuation. Poems...
Continue »
The story is contrived and as implausible as they get. The writing is mediocre. But this is nothing. The book reeks with the effort to explain how a middle age rich white man who has sex with a minor female student is doing nothing wrong. In fact, high school girls today want and need nothing more than having sex with middle aged white rich men! Penn's sidekick, the beautiful baby sitter Mia, is an unrealistic example of such a teenager, so smart and mature that of course boys her age won't satisfy her... and of course she is perfectly competent to consent to sex. If only our society were not so narrow minded!
This is disturbing. The fact that the bad guys in the story are all members of minorities (blacks-including a DA, unidentified Asians, and a Slavic man) does add up to a pretty creepy picture of Iles' mentality, in which rich white men are in power and should be free to fight evildoers without the shackles of the justice system, and young and gorgeous teenagers are only too happy to oblige. I'll say this: if I had a pretty teenage daughter, I'd keep her far from Mr. Iles. Ugly ones, obviously, need not fear.
Was this comment helpful? | Yes | No
(12 of 22 readers found this comment helpful)
Powell's City of Books is an independent bookstore in Portland, Oregon, that fills a whole city block with more than a million new, used, and out of print books. Shop those shelves — plus literally millions more books, DVDs, and eBooks — here at Powells.com.
Don't Miss
Customer Comments
Francesca has commented on (1) product.
Turning Angel: A Novel by Greg Iles
Francesca, January 18, 2007
The story is contrived and as implausible as they get. The writing is mediocre. But this is nothing. The book reeks with the effort to explain how a middle age rich white man who has sex with a minor female student is doing nothing wrong. In fact, high school girls today want and need nothing more than having sex with middle aged white rich men! Penn's sidekick, the beautiful baby sitter Mia, is an unrealistic example of such a teenager, so smart and mature that of course boys her age won't satisfy her... and of course she is perfectly competent to consent to sex. If only our society were not so narrow minded!This is disturbing. The fact that the bad guys in the story are all members of minorities (blacks-including a DA, unidentified Asians, and a Slavic man) does add up to a pretty creepy picture of Iles' mentality, in which rich white men are in power and should be free to fight evildoers without the shackles of the justice system, and young and gorgeous teenagers are only too happy to oblige. I'll say this: if I had a pretty teenage daughter, I'd keep her far from Mr. Iles. Ugly ones, obviously, need not fear.
(12 of 22 readers found this comment helpful)