Somehow I'd thought I'd read this already but it turns out I hadn't. I'd probably started it and gotten distracted, which, with such a long book, is easy to do (at least for me) but fresh from The Goldfinch, I thought I'd (re)read only to discover . . . well, enough about me. I'm beginning to sound as self involved as the characters in this anti-mystery.

People in the other reviews were angered at this book for reasons which make no sense to me, or, maybe I just disagree with them. Maybe those readers were too self-involved to spend time with people who would have reminded them of themselves (if they dared let them), for the self-involvement in the book is that of youth and is a stage I imagine we all have to pass through (though some are stalled in the midst of it.) Like college kids everywhere, they think they know and understand much more than they actually do, and both learn and also unlearn a lot along the way.

What they learn is that their limited perspective is, well, limited. What they unlearn is that the new perspectives they gain are also limited, just limited different. Julian, the head of what could only be described as a cult, would say that the right limited perspective is a good one and that too much breadth not only costs you by not allowing for depth, but costs you the very experience of depth, which is valuable in itself. If we think of the modern world as one in which ADHD is, if not normal, at least understandably prevalent, our cult members instead immerse themselves in the world of the ancients which not only has different values, but a whole different way of experiencing reality. But even that is not enough, for even the ancients realized that having a self is so annoying that, despite comfort and privilege, we will do anything to get rid of it, if only for a little while.

One perspective that is singularly painful for our characters is that they are guilty of murder and that something that close to life and death can't be trivialized away. The book is ultimately about the consequences of this understanding and what it does, not only to the individuals, but to the relationships between them. This gets played out against a backdrop of the modern world with its police investigations, keg parties, spoiled rich people, class differences and hatreds, etc. In addition, we get tension between loneliness vs. real and imagined deep connection.

So what's not to like? Richard feels insufficiently male to me, for one, which served to reminded me that the author is female at times when this is distracting from the mood. Also, the (spoiler alert) suicide scene was less than convincing and seemed more for the purpose of moving the story along than anythings else. But the explanation that contrasted it to Julian's "cowardly" exit helped somewhat.