The Fountainhead

So the other day I decided to prove my libertarian bonafides and pick up a copy of The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand. It seemed like a very imposing book (it's so famous and, of course, it's 700 pages long) but, 200 pages in, I confess to finding it very readable and very interesting.

There's something sort of odd about this book, though: it doesn't really have an "atmosphere." With many books, during the period that I'm reading them, I feel like I inhabit their world. I recently spent several days in the South African desert while reading Doris Lessing's The Grass is Singing. I stayed in an English country house in the 1930s with Evelyn Waugh's A Handful of Dust. The Fountainhead, though, doesn't really stick with me in that way when I close its pages. I sort of feel like this is deliberate on the part of the author.

I'm interested if any of you have read The Fountainhead and if you agree?

Ok, back to reading now...:)