This was kind of bizarre, in the sense that I still can't gauge my response to it. I think this will be a slow burner. The italics, though....oh man. I almost gave up 30 pages in because I was so distracted by counting the number of italicized text on each page. I found myself flipping through the book just to find a page WITHOUT italics. That almost drove me away from the book. Definitely not my favorite Irving, but worth finishing.