I just have one short chapter to go in Ellington Boulevard by Adam Langer.

I think it’s a good read but with reservations. I liked, felt annoyed, cheered on, blatted mental raspberries at and generally enjoyed myself in the company of the characters Langer created.

But…but…something was missing.

Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy slow reads, i.e. the kind of book that I often associate with British writers (or non-American, to be fair) because they are far more concerned with character than with the plot—plot—plot obsession that infects far too many American novels for my taste

This is a slow read by an American author, and on that count, I cheer. No one is murdered, raped, eviscerated, blown up or beaten up, unless you count a justifiable dog attack. My kinda book.

But there’s something, I don’t know, rather elliptical about this author’s writing that left me feeling vaguely as though I’d had a great conversation with someone I met at a party but could never know better.

Still and all, I liked this one well enough to hand off to a friend to see what she thinks.