[Deseassaugs]

I may have said this elsewhere here, but when it first came out in France I read the first hundred pages and put it aside. Littell had done a remarkable amount of research, which landed undigested on the page (first rule of writing fiction: do your research a few years before and walk away from it), and hence the novel felt to me like a meal both undercooked and overcooked: in both cases indigestible and not very tasty.

Stylistically he came off as null.