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reasie's review
4.0
This short novel opens a bit opaquely, with a slew of neologisms to ground you in a near-future world where American society is subtly changed.
I picked up a copy of this book because it was short, and I know Charlie, and I really like his writing. Also it gave me something for my husband to read. He likes clear prose, stories about character, not events, and hasn't the attention span for long novels. This is the perfect book for him.
There are many allusions to Crime and Punishment, which the main character is reading as he goes through his life-altering senior year of high school, and it seems deliberate that like Raskolnikov he finds himself desperate to admit his guilt to those around him, though in Karl's case his guilt is over a crime he has not committed, and his moral quandary is one of the most delightfully complex I've read about in a while.
I picked up a copy of this book because it was short, and I know Charlie, and I really like his writing. Also it gave me something for my husband to read. He likes clear prose, stories about character, not events, and hasn't the attention span for long novels. This is the perfect book for him.
There are many allusions to Crime and Punishment, which the main character is reading as he goes through his life-altering senior year of high school, and it seems deliberate that like Raskolnikov he finds himself desperate to admit his guilt to those around him, though in Karl's case his guilt is over a crime he has not committed, and his moral quandary is one of the most delightfully complex I've read about in a while.
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