Then there are many bravura touches, even after the first quarter of the book, which lift Forever well above most contemporary novels by hacks like T.C. Boyle, Joyce Carol Oates, or David Foster Wallace. Three have stuck in my consciousness.

On page 217, Hamill makes excellent use of parenthetical huzzahs and anaphora in a scene of an oath being taken. This shows that while the macro-structure of the book is anomic, Hamill still retained a firm hand on the innovative micro-structure of some individual scenes.

On page 373, there is an excellent digression on Boss Tweed's definitional difference between bullshit and horseshit. It not only is funny, but gives good insight into that character, as well as the New York and American political rationales for deceit.

The final memorable scene that has stuck comes on page 426, when Cormac muses over the publisher's change of title for a Fyodor Dostoevsky book, with The Possessed renamed Demons. This was an obvious and cynical marketing ploy, a few years ago- just as Marcel Proust's Remembrance Of Things Past was re-Christened In Search Of Lost Time, done simply so readers might buy both versions for a comparison of the differences.

Yet, beyond that, Cormac muses on the novel, which he'd read a century earlier, and there is a nice emotional parallax conveyed. Add in the aforementioned scene of Thunder's leap of legendry over water, which harkens back to the great descriptions in Robinson Jeffers' poem Roan Stallion, and the book has a surfeit of great moments and writing.

Yet, it also has too many ill-conceived and wrought melodramatic moments, ripped straight from modern day soap operas, as well as tabloids headlines. The sudden return of the Earl of Warren's whore, Bridget Riley, in America, is a good example. When Cormac goes to kill Willie Warren, scion of the Warren clan, and Willie asks Cormac to bed his young wife, because he wants her to have a good sex life he cannot provide, it's the sort of melodrama routine on soap operas and in romance books, but which never happens in real life, nor adult literary fiction. The scene also deflates because we know, from Hamill's telegraphed buildup, that Cormac is not going to kill Willie.

Of course, this act of mercy only makes the impact of Willie's death on 9/11- when we were expecting Cormac's girlfriend to die, all the more powerful; but that does not negate the telegraphing, for the power of Willie's death would have remained- as it is due to the kindness, not whether or not we felt Cormac was going to kill him or not. Then there is the previously mentioned final Fabio-like sex scene, on page 606, which leads to the Twilight Zone-like final scene, where love conquers death (groan).

This hit and miss novel demanded more interiority, not exteriority, from Hamill. The reader loses too much interest in Cormac midway through the book, and by the end, we have little connection between the wizened old sage, at book's end, and the passionate young man at book's start. Yes, much of the tale has superbly stellar writing by Hamill, but it also has some pedestrian fare, and it even has a few troughs that flat out stink, such as the telegraphed and melodramatic ending, which, after the survival of Delfina, is unfortunately inevitable in Forever's universe.