“I read the reviews on this before I was quite finished, and I think if I had read them before I started then I might not have read this book at all, but I am very glad I did. The interest for me was in the raw way the author thrusts you behind the scenes of these characters. I say "behind the scenes" rather than "in the heads" because it's true that this book is more like an act of voyeurism than anything. You are not really in these people's heads so much as just watching them. It's a lot like watching a movie, really. Only instead of good acting, we have Charles Bock, which is just as good, let me tell you. These people are real. They are so real, and none of them are real protagonists. There is no "good guy". This is real life. There is no conclusion to real life, there is no ultimate summing up. Real life is just like this. Messy.
The oddest thing occured to me after I finished this book. In "normal" society, the people in this book are the people off to the side that are passed over, ignored. In this book, they are the real people. It is the "normal" people that are glossed over, ignored. The normals exist outside the scope of this other, darker world, and here we can see very deeply into these invisible people.
Utterly fascinating.”
Nina W wrote this review Friday, July 31, 2009.
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