Mercury Pictures Presents by Anthony Marra

 A Serious Novel. You can tell it's serious, because there's not a lot that happens in it. Or, there's a lot of people running around, and a narrative voice that head-hops as though Marra wants to be writing in the 19th century or something. It's not a novel without decent characters, interesting people (two overlapping, non-identical groups) and it's not exactly true that nothing happens, just that pretty much everything that happens in it happens at about the same level of tension. The authorial voice is pleasant enough, and there are some decent enough turns of phrase, but there's probably not enough to this to justify 400 pages.