It's just not that good, is it?

We're done. A & I both read vols 10-12 in Brazil. As warned, vol 12 is rubbish. 10 & 11 are harder to describe: they're not without amusing moments - in fact they are a lot less serious than the preceding nine. Equally, there are some well drawn characters, old and new (needed after the cull in the war). That said though, it continues to lack depth, coherence and, well, point.

Take Books... for example, it's all a bit random: a few new people; some old characters and cameos. Nothing happens, and in a really inconsequential way. If they were diaries, this would be interesting (up to a point) because it would be real. But it's not, and it just sort of meanders along in a not unpleasant way for 200 odd pages before we do it again.

Around this time last year, when we finished Proust there was a real sense of achievement, not because of it's claimed taut, fast-moving plot, but because the immersion in interior detail of its characters and the excellence of some of the writing (though I don't the final volumes worked) gave it weight, even in some of its more ridiculous moments. Powell fails to do this. We get glimpses of an interesting world, but we'd be better off reading the journals, and there are better novels.