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Sep 02, 2014diesellibrarian rated this title 2.5 out of 5 stars
This starts out as a promising story about the last remaining transcriptionist at a fictional daily newspaper in New York. Lena, the protagonist, accepts the clerical job as an antidote to the overwhelming pressure of grad school. She spends her days transcribing stories and interviews phoned in by reporters in the field. Things start to unravel for Lena when she becomes obsessed with a the story of a blind woman who feeds herself to the lions at the metro zoo. From here, the story devolves, becoming very self-conscious and overly didactic. Towards the end, it reads like an MFA thesis in Creative Writing. The tropes are heavy-handed, and the crux of the narrative feels contrived. Overall, the writing is good, but this book is not the "masterpiece" I was expecting.