Oh dear, where to begin ... (1) I can't explain why, but knowing little about the book beforehand you're kind of expecting "The Wonder Years". Instead, almost off the bat, you kind of get something more akin to a David Lynch film; (2) How does this series of short character pieces somehow work as a unified whole? It's a little hard to tell: the book seems to deemphasize proper literary form in favor of the author's intuitive, almost arbitrary whims, like a chef who arrives at their final dish by taste and taste alone; (3) A recurring image is of a character inexplicably, breathlessly running away—what's interesting about the book is the image of America it paints as something that's free and enormous and wide open and full of possibility, but at the same time chokingly restrictive and smothering, in a deeply unfathomable way; (4) It's a short, 200+ page book. But I found the individual stories so uncomfortably intense, the book turned out to be a surprisingly slow read; (5) While the diverse character studies don't always 100 percent ring true all of the time, the revelation of people's private lives and personal logics as being somewhat bizarre, somewhat inexplicable, and more than a little believable in its nonsense is piercingly perceptive—early on, the book declares, we each decide to follow a truth, and we each age into truth-molded grotesques who perhaps learn too late that maybe we had it all wrong all along; (6) Personally, did the book in spots make me think about my own embarrassments, make me feel a tinge of horror in the pit of my stomach over my own past behavior? Yes; (7) Once again, I feel I should reiterate: if you're expecting "Our Town", THIS IS CERTAINLY NO "OUR TOWN"; (8) Upon finishing, out loud, I remarked to myself, "That was a wonderful book!" You know what's thrilling in a novel? When you're not sure how the author is going to stick the landing after a turbulent flight but somehow they manage, even as you deplane feeling weak-kneed and naggingly unsettled—My god, you think, even if we all survive it's likely none of us are ever going to be okay. Four stars.