Minor Poets

Once I started reading this book, I had trouble putting it down. The plot is intricate, but engrossing. It appeals to a very wide audience, from gay to straight, old to young, poets to fiction writers. It is extraordinarily well written, and I enjoyed the characters until the very last page. I wish that it had never ended!

This is a wonderful,well written novel,I could not put it down until the last page. Mr Conrad interweaves the lives of 20 plus characters that make you feel and care for them and hope things work out for them. Exactly what a good book should do, make you think about things, people and our own place in the world. His characters are smart, funny, attractive and just the kind of people you meet every day. A wonderful story with a slightly melancoly ending that left me wondering what happened to the rest of the characters. Check this out if you like contemporary fiction, it's Great.

Not only is this book a smart and sharp take on the world of academic poetry, it is also a lovesong to Chicago. The city has never looked so lovely and so real on the page. It made me perfectly homesick.

I bought this book because it was written by a local author, but I soon discovered that it's so much more. Conrad's characters are real, complex and fascinating -- and often hilarious. It's a dead-on satire of two disparate worlds that are both, nonetheless, ripe for satire: academia and nuclear science. While much of it will make you laugh out loud, it also possesses great depth, and the type of gorgeous sentences that stay in your head long after you've finished reading.

Witty, Bitchy, insighful, romantic. I LOVED this book!