Hi Donna

Huh .. I think his flat characters are just bad writing myself, but that's an interesting perspective.

The whole Buddhism thing occurs in his description of the Goenka Vipassana retreat that occurs early on in the novel. As for his self-description, did you not notice the ebulient way that his character is praised by everyone who knows him throughout the book? It seems to me that that's not the most tactful thing to do when the protagonist is a thinly-veiled version of yourself.

In my read of the novel, that went with the problematic flatness of the characters and the two-dimensional critiques of other existential philosophies (Buddhism) to show an authorial voice that can't depict a world with multiple points of view. I don't see a serious challenge to any of the conclusions that Yalom has come to in his other writings on any subject, including life, death, religion, meaning, or growth. I think he can't see beyond the horizons of his own beliefs, which is fine for an academic but lethal for a novelist.

Well, in fairness, Yalom has been studying the existential fear of death for decades.