@highbg  I think there's a good chance that I'll be disappointed by the novel but after studying and now teaching literature for the better part of my adult life there are a great number of novels I've read and been disappointed by. So, why shouldn't I give this novel a shot? In some ways it seems like Joyce's Ulysses or Tolstoy's War and Peace--a behemoth of a novel that many claim to have read, think they should read or mean to read but never do.  So why not? It's only a novel.