This was recommended to be from somewhere, someone. And . . . I did it by audiobook and at about 70% I found myself saying "what the actual heck?"

Is this an allegory? Is there a lesson here, or is it just super weird? I dunno, it had hints of Kurt Vonnegut, but too weird 20-year-old-life to be that. So strange.

Sort of a mash-up of Don Delillo's White Noise and Michel Faber's Book of Strange New Things. Amazed that such a young writer can so effectively delve into existential musings and cultural commentary. I found it simultaneously funny, touching and unsettling.

I am positive massive themes of this book went straight over my head, but this was potentially the most boring book I've ever read, so I have no interest in going back and re-reading it.

Our protagonist, A, lives with a creepy roommate who wants to emulate everything about her and has the world's worst boyfriend. The first 60% of this book is just rattling along inside of A's head, inuring the reader to her shitty life, her eating disorder, and her neuroticism. Along the way, some strange and potentially connected incidents happen, involving a lot of white sheets, an abandoned house, some disturbing commercials, and the world's cruelest dating show.

As A gets sucked more and more into the mystery, the book evolves from a little bit off to deeply bizarre. The final act was thrilling in content, and I still needed a nap halfway through because the prose is BORING.

Would not recommend. I should have quit while I was ahead.

I think the prose itself is excellent, but I just could not get into it/found myself skimming and speed reading just to get through it. The cult scenes were fantastic, but they got lost in the neverending critique of postmodern consumerism.

I don’t know why it’s so good but it’s so good.

“But maybe the fathers were just seeking a perfect life, which when you think about it is a completely reasonable thing to do. They wanted the good things: the popcorn, the corn dogs, the plush industrial mall carpeting with its friendly geometric patterns screaming themselves in green, pink, and brick red, stretching across the concourse like a little, comprehensible fragment of infinity. They didn’t want the bad things: the pressure, the stress, the weekly division of chores by chore wheel, the homework that they thought they had done away with when they graduated elementary school or middle school or high school or business school. They didn’t want the gift-curse of recognition by those they loved and who loved them back, one consequence of that love’s durability being that they would be recognized and loved aggressively even on days when they couldn’t stand to recognize themselves in the mirror, even on days when merely remembering themselves made them sad and want to sleep. Love that made every day a day that they had to live in a handcrafted, artisanal fashion, rather than being outsourced to someone who could do it happily and efficiently for a third of the price.

They might have thought, to use a stock phrase, that somewhere out there was a way to “have their cake and eat it, too.” That many of them returned to their homes months later, malnourished, dehydrated, and amnesiac could be interpreted as evidence that there is no cake anywhere in the world to be had or eaten.”