Helpful Score: 3
Wonderfully absurd. Odd characters in bizarre situations and, especially, hilarious dialogue is reminiscent of Charles Portis. A very amusing novel.
Helpful Score: 1
Really fun and easy read!!
This is a really strange book. While reading, I wasn't sure I even liked it. I was constantly thinking about how strange it was. However, especially now that I am finished with it, I found it very worthwhile.
Decently written and moves quickly. If you love stories of dysfunctional families, you'll love this one because it may just top them all.
You'll definitely learn something about performance art in this.
***** Spoiler-ish *****
I will go to my cremation urn without an appreciation of performance art; I don't understand it and if this book is any attempt to explain it, I want no part of it. Creating a physical disturbance isn't art. It takes more far more talent and creativity to create a disturbance in another's mind, regardless of medium. Just my opinion.
This story, as a medium, created a disturbance in me. The parents' treatment of their children angered me to a point that I hated them. I didn't care how endearing the author tried to make them by having them blinded to everything in the world but art and each other, they were awful human beings and should never have been allowed to raise other human beings to adulthood. Their selfishness perverted poor Annie's and Buster's childhoods to the point that they couldn't function in the world without feeling that the world was, indeed, some kind of stage. I felt just as sick to my stomach as Buster during that stunt they pulled in the restaurant.
I felt happy for both Annie and Buster at the end, particularly for Annie, whose cathartic, final scene simultaneously purified several of the book's elements.
Some of the storyline was a stretch of the imagination and although I was happy to make it, I can't give it more than four stars. It gets a solid three and a half.
You'll definitely learn something about performance art in this.
***** Spoiler-ish *****
I will go to my cremation urn without an appreciation of performance art; I don't understand it and if this book is any attempt to explain it, I want no part of it. Creating a physical disturbance isn't art. It takes more far more talent and creativity to create a disturbance in another's mind, regardless of medium. Just my opinion.
This story, as a medium, created a disturbance in me. The parents' treatment of their children angered me to a point that I hated them. I didn't care how endearing the author tried to make them by having them blinded to everything in the world but art and each other, they were awful human beings and should never have been allowed to raise other human beings to adulthood. Their selfishness perverted poor Annie's and Buster's childhoods to the point that they couldn't function in the world without feeling that the world was, indeed, some kind of stage. I felt just as sick to my stomach as Buster during that stunt they pulled in the restaurant.
I felt happy for both Annie and Buster at the end, particularly for Annie, whose cathartic, final scene simultaneously purified several of the book's elements.
Some of the storyline was a stretch of the imagination and although I was happy to make it, I can't give it more than four stars. It gets a solid three and a half.
This was a weird book on family life....but so many other
people liked it.
people liked it.
