Segal, a real-life member of the class of ’58, sprinkles the text with quaint Harvard lingo and liberally employs his own Ivy League lexicon. (I tapped more words into my dictionary app than I’m comfortable admitting.) His characters are adequately distinctive and appreciable on their own merits, and his narrative is lovely. Segal is obviously a skilled writer. Unfortunately, he has one annoying habit: He uses sentence fragments for emphasis. Overuses them, really. To the point where I got exasperated. Like you probably are with these fragments. Just plain tired of them. Despite this, his storytelling is effective and intelligent.
Eliot House, Harvard University |
Like Ragtime, The Class incorporates real historical figures and events. Henry Kissinger and Richard Nixon are significant players, as is Israel’s military hero, Yoni Netanyahu. The book covers a fair amount of the era’s American political drama and branches into some Hungarian and Israeli affairs as well. In fact, Jason’s heart-wrenching storyline is strongly pro-Israel and even stirred up a little latent Zionism in my true red-white-and-blue spirit.
Erich Segal |