"There is a really, truly fantastic book here. There's also a mediocre book here. There are also a few other books here, and hence the issue: too much. A fourth of this book or more could have been scrapped and not missed at all, which is a shame because what would have been saved would have made for an astounding piece of fiction. What could have easily been an overly gimmicky book centered around three of the scientists largely responsible for the atomic bomb being magically transported into modern day at the moment the first test explosion happened in the New Mexico desert in 1945 is saved by Millet's brilliant, beautiful, funny and human characterizations of those three characters, and then completely compromised by an unwillingness to edit and an overwhelming willingness to repeat and expostulate.

Millet is a good writer. In fact, she might be a great writer. In facter, she might be a much better writer than she realizes. Throughout the novel Millet gives character asides and historical tidbits to examine things she's already rather beautifully brought out through her characters and the story action. It's like having really good sex with someone, then you reach a really nice climax, but then the other person just keeps going and won't stop and you start getting raw and frustrated and it's not like the sex wasn't good, but after a while you just start getting rubbed the wrong way.

See how that metaphor went on too long and became slightly distateful? You now know what it's like to read Oh Pure and Radiant Heart.

This review has turned more disparaging than it was meant to be. I actually really liked the book and plan to read more of Ms. Millet's writing very soon, but I have always found it so much more infuriating when a book is so so close to being sublime but then subverts itself than when a book is just plain awful. This book was so close. So close!

And the ending. Yowza. I have a friend who is a writer who told me once "For every story, you get one piece of b@tsh!t crazy." You get one piece of the fantastical, then everything else has to follow logically from there. Three scientist travel through time after the Trinity Test, that's your gratis b@tsh!t. The Deus Ex Machina in this book (or would it be Deus Ex Avis?) completely ruins a wonderful buildup of tension and intrigue.

Bah! Back to the negativity! The books is good, I swear! Really good! When you start to get bored, it's okay. Skip to the end of that section, you won't miss much, then keep reading. When it is good, it is very very good..."

"So � uh � Robinson Cruesoe is a slaver. And a pretty unrepentant one at that. Why was this never mentioned to me before? Come on popular culture, you have some explaining to do."

"This is one of those books that really serves to remind a modern audience of why we should kill [censored to protect sensitive Republican ears]. Robinson Crusoe is the story of a young man with atrociously bad luck who, unfortunately for any shipmates he ever has, suffers from an extreme case of wanderlust. Every ship he gets onto sinks, but he just keeps getting onto them. Even after he's got a nice, successful plantation of his own, he decides he's just GOT to get on ANOTHER ship to -- get this -- procure himself some slaves. It crashes of course, and he gets stranded alone on an island.

Not to worry, though -- he's got a bible, and he successfully becomes a religious zealot while alone with nothing better to do. It's too bad that his only book couldn't have been a copy of Don Quixote or something because maybe then he'd have become a more interesting storyteller. But no, like so many people who have terrible luck, he turns to "god" and starts counting his "blessings," more-or-less out of a lack of anything better to do.

Then, after he's been alone for 24 years, he sees a footprint in the sand, and he totally freaks, and he becomes convinced it must belong to the devil. Ummm, ok. So I'm sitting there thinking, "Maybe it's your own footprint." But it takes this genius a whole day of scaring himself before he comes up with that explanation. Anyway, it turns out not to be his footprint at all, it actually belongs to the "savages" (Carribean Indians) who apparently visit the island sometimes in order to cook and eat their prisoners, which, for the record, was not actually a common practice among Indians in the Americas. And here's the part where you really hate white people. He then saves one of the prisoners from being eaten and makes him into his slave, who he renames "Friday," teaches English, and converts to Christianity. Friday, instead of kicking this pompous jerk's posterior from here to next Friday after repaying whatever debt he owed Robinson for saving his life, is a faithful slave in every way for the remainder of the book. Friday speaks in a pidgin English, which is probably realistic enough for a man who learned English late in life from one solitary individual, but Robinson has an offensive habit of translating easy-enough-to-understand things that Friday says to us, the idiot readers ("At which he smiled, and said - 'Yes, yes, we always fight the better;' that is, he meant always get the better in fight"). Also, during Friday's religious education, he asks Robinson why god doesn't just kill the devil and end evil, and because there is actually no good answer to such a question for a religious person, Robinson simply pretends not to hear him and wanders away. What a jack*ss! Luckily, Robinson Crusoe's religious conversion doesn't last forever. As soon as he's back in civilization and making money hand over fist, he pretty much gives it up.

Speaking of which, what was with the end of this book? He gets rescued, he goes home, but there's no emotional payoff, and instead he goes on about his European adventures with Friday. We don't care about the wolves and dancing bear! We want to know, did you learn anything from your years away? Do you feel like you missed out? Was anyone happy to see you? Did they have a funeral for you while you were missing? What did your mother do when she saw you again? Robinson Crusoe is a man without any of the human characteristics that make people interesting to read about when they get into difficult situations. He has no regrets, no personal longings, and he never reflects on his life before he was on the island during his decades on the island. I understand that this is just an "adventure novel" but people actually still read this tripe and consider it a classic!"