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I had a hard time staying interested in the first section ("Book 1"). It seemed to be dragging along, I had a hard time identifying with the characters, and especially a hard time with the writing - it didn't seem to flow naturally, his use of language is kind of sporadic and halting, at least seems so to me.
The second section, got a little more interesting so I kept on. Nonetheless, the whole book didn't really do it for me. Mostly he seems to be just hopping around random topics, none of them are particularly interesting. I mean, yes, there is some slice of life stuff, he's portraying these people in their self-centered lives, and he's fairly decent at getting across how dysfunctional they are. But besides that there doesn't really seem to be any point.
Occasionally there were some interesting bits, some moments of lucid writing with some hints of something meaningful. Occasionally some nice poetic passages, such as:
"she took his arm snugly, settling into it with a series of little readjustments, as if she wanted it to be right because it was going to be there forever". I thought this was nice when I read it.
But overall it seems like he doesn't elaborate on the poetic stuff. He throws out a few words or a sentence that seems like it should go somewhere, but then he just leaves it hanging.
for example:
"the constant carnival at Juan les Pins where the night was musical and strident in many languages."
This is an interesting choice of words - strident is an abrupt word to use in this context - he begins the the painting of a scene, a scene that seems like it could be interesting in its own right, but he leaves it there and doesn't develop it. I'm left wanting the scene to be developed - what are the many languages, what are the people like who are speaking them, why did the narrator notice it to begin with - is there something about carnivals the narrators identifies with? Things like that.
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