Instruct: Classify a given review as either positive or negative.
Query: Deep thoughts in the English countryside or writers conceit?

This book didn't fill me with any deep insights except possibly into Naipaul's conceit. Despite some occasional beautiful description this book doesn't do much. Naipaul's pontifications on the "common people" approach the truly condescending as he attempts to "understand" them. And yet it all seems geared as a justification for his own preoccupied ruminations. I just don't think it's Naipaul's best which is when he's got a real story to tell, his own or someone else's. I'm just not that interested in Naipaul's thought processes. Or maybe I just don't like them, either way he's written better. Possibly if he wasn't so self absorbed and inherently elitist I could like him better. When he uses his sharp mind for a better purpose he writes more interesting books.