Dennis Lehane and the epic novel
When I think of epic historical novels, I usually think that they are too long and poorly edited (that is probably redundant). I also expect them to cover several generations, some of which are rather uninteresting and several decades and events, many of which have no need to be remembered or romanticized.
So when i picked up Dennis Lehane’s latest novel, “The Given Day” and looked to the last page and saw that it said 702 and looked inside the front cover page and saw a cast of characters (but not who would play them in the inevitable movie given the success of his “Gone, Baby, Gone” and “Mystic River”), I opened the book to read it with some trepidation. Continue reading…
