Scan barcode
flowerbob's review against another edition
4.0
Surreal is the best summation I can think of; the story manages to be charming and sweet but also unsettling and disturbing. It's easy to read with a somewhat deceptively simple narrative but subverted by incidents and images of cruelty, both individual brutality and of inhumane aspects of society. I warmed to the central character but the book is hard to like because it makes for such uncomfortable reflections on modern life. I think it gets away with this because it becomes increasingly surreal towards the end, removing the action slightly from the real world where it would be unacceptably uncomfortable for the reader. It is in places very funny but has left me disconcerted and discombobulated.
More...