Worse in its characterisation. Actors can fill in the gaps in a thin script, and hint at depths that in writing must be done with throwaway lines and trifling details. There is none of that here. Tom Langdon is 2D. Everyone else is 1.5D, even Eleanor Carter, his long lost and ever after pined for love. Like Dickens, Baldacci uses defining quirks to set up his characters, but unlike Dickens, he doesn’t give us the incidental details that make these characters real enough to serve the illusion.
The writing is often indifferently general and abstract. Baldacci is one of those writers who believes that Latinate words (like “inclemency” for “storm”) elevate the style. And he is incapable of riffing on cliches to make them not only fresh but apt.
I kept on reading mostly because I wanted to see how the movie and book compared. The movie omits a few incidents, and cranks up the sentimentality (easily done with visuals, after all). The book could have been much better with more ruthless editing. Baldacci’s story is a typical love-romance, and the tropes of the genre must be respected. But a lot of the time it reads more like a travelogue than a novel. His attempts at ironic witticism fall flat.
The plot hinges on Tom’s understanding that his past life was a refusal to accept reality, and Eleanor’s willingness to take him back. That requires more complex and subtle dialogue than Baldacci gave himself room for. The acknowledgements suggest that the book was “project” proposed to him, perhaps by AMTRAK. It doesn’t feel like a story he felt compelled to tell.
Schlock, barely OK as a beach or airplane read. *
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