Well, damn the star rating system! This is obviously a very, very clever novel, a wonderfully conceived experiment in literary rhetoric--exactly my kind of thing! It's fabulously against the grain of the false paradigm of the classic novel. Plus it's laugh out-loud funny, poignant at times, always merry and entertaining...

But, well, as much as I appreciated all of its intricacies, the literary references (I picked it up just after reading Haney's translation of Sweeney Astray when I came to understand the significance of the title), It just didn't quite move me in the way that a truly perfect novel does. I wanted it to, I really did. Intellectually, it was all there. Somehow a bit of heart was lacking, a slight je ne sais qua of profundity, of earth-shattering necessity. Anger or outrage perhaps?--and maybe I'm only yearning for that because of the Trump/Jong-un end-of-the-world zeitgeist, I dunno. Everyone I know loves this novel and I wanted to love it as much as they do but I have to confess that I loved it a little bit less than they do. It's still really, really good. And funny. I laughed out loud on the bus often, annoying people. Plus the writers within writers game was glorious--for this writer. I'm rambling. ...