I just couldn't with this book...I got half way through and it was just fuck awful. I can handle less than lovable protagonists but this kid was just so goddamned privileged I wanted to give myself paper cuts on my eyeballs.

- meh
- an early-20's disillusioned loser struggles to rise to the challenges presented by adulthood - struggles and loses
- I just didn't like the protagonist that much - and the plot kept veering into the far-fetched (and stupid)
- I almost gave up a couple of times
- just wasn't for me

Funny, smart, and sad all at the same time. It's a book about suburbia and what it'd actually mean to stay here and live an unexamined life. Drugs, sex, music, and mostly a whole lot of boredom - that's Eli's life. Even after he lands a surrogate father figure, he can't quite rouse himself out of this stupor... because it just doesn't really seem worth it. It's a "slacker novel to end all slacker novels" because he isn't disaffected or rebelling - he just doesn't really care. There's nothing behind it.

Read it when you go home to see your parents, when you're walking up your driveway and the whole town is silent, when you see your high school friends still going to parties in the same basements as they were five years ago. It's funny and sad and you'll be happy you made the choices you did - or maybe you'll feel deeply uncomfortable about the fact that you're still living in your mom's basement. Either way, this is a brilliant book.

More about it at RB: http://wp.me/pGVzJ-lF

(PS: a big thanks to Harper Perennial for sending along a review copy!)