It's easy to forget that the main action of this book takes place in 1995, at the beginning of the whole "vaccines cause autism" shit show. Substitute "catching on fire" with autism and you basically have the same story. 

I don't know what I was expecting with this book. I read it for my book club and loved it. It was funny in ways I wasn't expecting and I had to remind myself not to write in the library copy I was reading. All of the characters were complex, even Jasper who was the one complete asshole. Look, you don't shit on Dolly Parton. Only actual idiots are incapable of acknowledging her contributions to music as a whole - not just country music - and by extension the entirety of American culture. Jasper shits on Dolly Parton.

At any rate, I liked this a lot and am looking forward to talking about it at book club tomorrow