Louis de Bernières - The Autumn Of The Ace (Harvill Secker, 2020) *

 Can it be that an author's writing completely deteriorates with the passing of time? Or is it the loyal reader who becomes more critical and difficult over time? 

I enjoyed the following novels by de Bernières: 

1. The War of Don Emmanuel's Nether Parts (1990)
2. Señor Vivo and the Coca Lord (1991)
3. The Troublesome Offspring of Cardinal Guzman (1992)
4. Captain Corelli's Mandolin (1994)
5. Red Dog (2001)
6. Birds Without Wings (2004)
7. A Partisan's Daughter (2008)

I thought they were funny, well written, interesting, original and often moving, with interesting characters, carefully crafted plots, creative and entertaining. Not "high" literature, but fun to read. 

In 2015, he published "The Dust That Falls From Dreams", which I found utterly boring. But OK, that may happen. So, full of enthusiasm I bought his latest novel, "The Autumn Of The Ace", which is as bad as the previous ones. The novel is situated in the same family and it has all the same problems as the previous ones: totally uninteresting characters, no plot, shallow human sentiments, no tension, no real development, dialogues for which a first year student of creative writing would get bad notes (use dialogues to illustrate the relationship between the speakers, not to share background information to the reader), etc, etc. 

I read 150 pages of the 310, and it might be that by some miracle the rest of the book is good, but the chances are slim. 

Disappointing and sad.