People love this book and though I'm not one of them, it's obvious why. There's a uniqueness to it. It's not, as they would say in the text, a "norm," short for normal. Any book could have businessmen, narcissists, sexual explorers, murderers, journalists & crazy people (and this book has all of those.) Any book can be about families, cults, tragedies, coming of age (and this book is.) Any book can have an unreliable narrator (like this one.) But this one's narrator is a bald hunchbacked albino dwarf. This cult is about amputation and lobotomy. This is the story of a family of freaks. And so on. And the writing is good too--go read the quotes section if you doubt me.

So why don't I love it? Because once you take on the characters and situations this book does, you're under a lot of obligation to make good use of it. And that is how this book ultimately fails. Not completely. But often enough. And the ending most of all. Should I spoiler it? Let me just say that it was worse than norm. It was subnorm. Tacked on to make a point. Insufficently motivated by the characters (the author should have at least tried harder because it could have worked at that level at least) and cutting short the developing relationship before it could get interesting in the easiest way possible.