Word: subplot
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...were just...unskilled," is what Michael concludes, thinking back on their afflicted marriage. In its picture of a discontented family over the long arc of the years, this book can remind you of The Corrections without Jonathan Franzen's emotional knots. In its subplot of a daughter lost to the lures of the 1960s, it can bring to mind American Pastoral without Philip Roth's refining fires. Toward the end, Michael hears an old song on his car radio. "He liked the way the singer kept her voice so plain and ordinary," Tyler tells us, "too intent on expressing...
...putting exposition and argument in the mouths of its characters. The friendship between Father Xavier and Ghani is well rendered and has the ring of truth. Vatikiotis' writing style is polished and evocative, despite occasional patches of purple that could have been pruned. The novel's Romeo-and-Juliet subplot is sugary and painfully predictable, with lovemaking scenes that the judges of the Bad Sex in Fiction Award could take under consideration...
Such unevenness pervaded A New Brain. Its songs are often unappealing, its plotting is sometimes weak (there’s an irrelevant subplot involving a homeless woman), and its staging was often static. But at the same time, this was a fittingly creative, moving and fun rendition of a unique musical. It was worth seeing for its sheer novelty...
Fitzpatrick’s situation provides Harvard with another subplot. After breaking his hand Oct. 11 against Cornell, Fitzpatrick returned to action against Dartmouth, only to re-aggravate the injury and miss last week’s contest against Columbia...
...sense. Why do the college students balk at tracking down their old classmates, then eventually not only hunt them down but tape-record their conversation? Why does Paul, when given a perfectly good chance to make it in the upper crust, turn it down? The play also features a subplot involving two Utah theater students that peters out without concluding, and an abrupt, unsatisfying ending...