Dual timelines duel

This book was fine, but I’m not sure it accomplished as much as it wanted to. It was a vaguely interesting story of a man’s journey through a week of his adult life and a good portion of his childhood as he tries to figure out where he’s been and where he’s going. Cohen, the protagonist, is deeply flawed, and as he tells Ava, very selfish. He takes many actions in the book that reveal him to be the most important character in his own life story, with very little regard to the way he’s treating anyone else. His life certainly hasn’t taken the normal path, but by the end of the book, i don’t think either i nor Cohen have a better idea of who he is than we had at the beginning of the book. He just seems to be sort of an empty vessel.

The real frustration is that I’m not sure what the point of this book is. Is it to talk about the difficult relationship between fathers and sons? Because i did appreciate that. But I’m not sure we needed this whole book to have that conversation. There was just a lot going on along the sides of the story. More time is either going to lend more appreciation to the story or I’ll never think of it again.

I also really get frustrated with books that go back and forth through points in time with no marker to signify when we are. Is it a big secret? Why can’t we put years or ages or something to warn the reader that now we’re in childhood and now we’re in the present?