Instruct: Classify a given Amazon review as either positive or negative.
Query: Lecture and speculation

The Novel is a decent work, which tries at times to emulate both models of the American novel it brings into conflict. So far, so good. But the characters were all too similar, often in background, always in broad intersests. Each section ends hanging, supposedly brought together at the end, but it doesn't work. Minor characters take over, until the fourth narrator becomes expendible. The book reads like a lecture, complete with reading list. Michener's typical blend of tolerance and judgement is not dramatic here, but a wash, slices of life without the meaning essential in literature.