John Casey, An American Romance *** 1/2

The attributes that make An American Romance great are inseparable from the ones that make it insufferable. The first two parts of the book do an amazing job of showing how two very different people fall in love because their differences fit exactly what the other person needs, and the whole book is filled with insights about personalities and interpersonal relationships. However, the prose is painfully overwritten in exactly the way you might expect from a writer who spent several years at the Iowa Writer's Workshop. Nearly every paragraph starts with a concrete description but ends with abstract twaddle. From a randomly selected page (103):

She said, "That summer when Henry was in the hospital, I went to music camp. You asked me if I was happy. I think I decided then that happiness was a passive, and, therefore, vulnerable state, so I started to prefer excitement..."

All of the characters, even the non-intellectual Mac, articulate this kind of generalization every time they think or speak. The generalizations are sometimes insightful and sometimes baffling, but the density of them is exhausting.

In its later parts, An American Romance portrays Iowa in a way that seems loving but condescending (cf. Anya's film project Iowa Girl).

I love An American Romance for Anya and Mac and the theater converted from a barn, but the over-educated tone finally defeats me.