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Oh, I hadn't really spotted until now that The Discovery Of Heaven was translated from the Dutch. Now that really is a book where all the flummery and intellectualism is there to hide a weak story. (Not that flummery by itself is necessarily bad -- there's such a thing as good flummery in its own right, such as in Gormenghast or The Pope's Rhinoceros. But if the flummery's no good, and the story it's hiding is no good either, what's the point?)