The Rings of Saturn
3.0 Stars
3-30-2016

A slow paced and dreamlike story. It follows the elderly narrator on a walking tour of the modern English coast and its run-down towns and abandoned sites. He weaves together laconic dreams, dying towns, European imperial history and atrocities, decaying museums, and various neurotics, cripples, ineffectual artists, and royals who are slowly wasting their inheritances. It's a bit like the _Connections_ series, if all the connections were dusty and ancient spider webs lit by a cloudy and fading English sun. Some of the passages actually are beautiful, but the book as a whole suffers by completely abjuring the power of plot.