Sometimes a book makes you think “am I taking crazy pills?” This is that book. A Booker prize, a Pegasus award, and a 4.0 rating.

Was I reading the same book as everyone else?

To clarify you can basically summarize the book with this question; “do you think that an adult man should be able to beat his elementary school aged son into a coma because his emotionally disturbed childhood delinquency is a pain in the ass?” “Do you believe, like every apparent other character in this story, that since he’s really sorry and the kid doesn’t have any other family, that he shouldn’t have had him taken?”

The other elements like the inventive wordplay and interspersing of identity investigation can not make up for the blatant child abuse apologetics that are woven into the text.

I did some research on the text after finishing and found that actually this book is quite divisive, including on the Booker committee the year it won the prize.