Stephen, how could you?!?
I picked this up at the library this afternoon solely because of Stephen King's high praise, and now I'm wondering if I should bother with the other two books I also checked out at his recommendation. The book is well and often wittily written (NOT well-constructed, mind you), and I afford it two stars for that, but that's the only good thing I can say about it. The protagonist is so poorly fleshed-out that I never even bothered to form a picture of him in my head (and certainly don't care what he may be up to in her next novel), and the remaining characters are either equally boring or so over-the-top as to be unbelievable. The most annoying, unsatisfying, unforgivable thing however is the author's lazy use of the deux ex machina to "tie up" one of the story lines. This felt like three short stories - only one of them at all compelling - forced together to make up a "novel." Really, really disappointing.