Alex Meeds’s Reviews > The Alchemist > Status Update

A hailstorm of contemporary references, commonplaces distorted, colloquialisms inverted, archaisms, dialects punned upon, clever ripostes, forgotten euphemisms that only a footnote can make heads or tails of, et cetetra. Language treated as if were flammable putty. Some of the most difficult, opaque writing I've ever read. More challenging than Shakespeare, even the late plays.