Scan barcode
michaelstearns's review
2.0
Adam Rapp writes beautifully. But it sometimes feels like a bit of a deliberate, manipulative slog through compounded uglinesses without any glimmers of light. Not a bad book at all, but to my mind, felt contrived towards darkness.
riatam's review
2.0
It was hard to read because the subject matter is hard. Reading it from 1st person view made it even more difficult. It was at times an emotional experience, but the book seemed to go nowhere. Several questions and issues and lives were introduced and pretty much none of them were resolved in any way. I have nothing against open endings, but if you're going to leave everything open why even write it? I remember back when I bought it, which was ages ago, how such a big story could be told in such a relatively short book. And I did feel like it could have benefited from maybe double the page count. Blacky, the protagonist, faces a serious trauma, and his family too suffers and deal with difficult times. But all that just gets thrown in and nothing is really done with it. To me, it was an unsatisfying experience.
More...