Quick reviews

I recently made my way through P.D. James's Original Sin because I had read somewhere that Rendell had cooed about it so lovelily.  And it was, truth be told, a very good mystery indeed. I had to feel, however, that James worked a little too hard trying to ladle on layer after layer of character to make the headiest brew possible. It was, in the end, a little overwrought.  Every action needed to be deeply motivated, each character needed to be as round as possible, to the extent that it was a little like a bunch of Pere Ubus wobbling round the text bumping their great stomachs against one another, muttering, "By my green candle!"  The novel could have clocked in 150 pages lighter without much loss. That said, somehow this was my first novel by James, and I will read more.

This weekend we watched Sophia Coppola's Somewhere.  Don't. At such a tender age, she has degenerated into a pale shadow of her already wispish self. There is no there there.