Hey, I LIKE Crews but this book stinks, and its a pity because it starts out good, but it runs into a tough patch and just keeps getting deeper and deeper in it. Every writer has his flaws, and often they are intimately related to his strengths; but played improperly as it were. That's sort of what happens here. Crews starts to work his magic, creating cracker archetypes from a few glimpses, a phrase, a cliche, and a heavy dose of alchemy; but the thing falls apart. The characters never form, they have nothing to do, nowhere to go and too much time to get there, which turns out to be the worst of this calamity because as a consequence they have entirely too much too say about nothing to each other while they wander about committing felony non sequitur for 200 or so pages. I've never seen Crews stumble like this, but this book reads like a novel one reads in spurts over a couple of months: you keep having trouble tying it together and wonder if you've forgotten something. Well, if nothing else it serves to illuminate just how magical Crews other work is, because this reads like a half assed attempt to emulate him. Kind of makes one wonder, after all Jerzy Kosinski...nah..never mind. Oh well, he's recovered now with Celebration, and presumably the new book,so no great loss, but don't waste your time or money on this one unless you are so into Crews that you want to see what happens when he flounders