Kelly

I did not necessarily like this book but I respected it a lot. (I have a hard time with any book that is rugged or western in general – maybe because I am an liberal East Coast elite? – so my lack of emotional connection is perhaps not surprising. I do have an affinity for well-drawn and deeply unlikable characters, though, which this book delivered in spades.) Whatever your literary preferences, this is undeniably a very well-crafted and masterfully written book. I'm glad I read it even though my own shortcomings in taste made it less enjoyable than it could've been.

But I slipped away, and am still slipping away, within these lines that are intended to give me a story, while in fact I am nothing, nothing of my own, nothing that has really begun or really been brought to completion: only a tangled knot, and nobody, not even the one who at this moment is writing, knows if it contains the right thread for a story or is merely a snarled confusion of suffering, without redemption.

Flashes of The Secret History: this book is populated by improbably erudite children who drink ludicrously — also, murder! It doesn't rise to the spellbinding beauty of Tartt's, but it's fun and funny and worth a read.

Truly pushing the bounds of unlikeable characters. The last page is stunning.

If you're looking for a very obvious mystery that, in its ignorance of mental illness, wildly stigmatizes whole groups of people, look no further. I cannot believe how frequently psychosis is conflated with psychopathy in this dumb book. How misinformed and dangerous.

Some veryyyyyy tough gender stuff in here as well — seems like it was written in 1980 and not 2014.

Lastly, whenever an author describes their protagonist as brilliant but does not themselves have the intelligence/skill to portray it, and you're left with a bog standard character who supposedly has a turbo-genius IQ....it's embarrassing.