Green v. Origin

After a long time, the Easter weekend gave me time to complete two fiction books – both in complete contrast of styles. Both by the same publisher. One is a mass market product having a clear view of millions of prints another the debut of a well-known beginner.

Green by Sam Graham-Felsen is set in the early 90’s and has the deft touch of an expert in racial commentary infusing Wonder Years to keep the levity.  It is a profound reading and keeping in just over 300pages, transported me to high school times when casual conversations highlighted the social divisions which the uniforms tried to pull a mask over. A genuine coming-of-age story.

On the other hand, Dan Brown sold millions of copies of his 7 books and the 5th one starring Robert Langdon is a pale ghost written over the Da Vinci Code and Angels and Demons template. Apparently a 4 year research went into the book which has a Wikipedia built into it explaining every noun used and a thesaurus that projects extremes of all adjectives. It is mildly interesting whodunit on a stand-alone basis, but the over the top descriptions of details does make more noise than the substance. A book should let the readers imagination take over. A screenplay spoon feeds the dumb!