This book had an entirely different feel from [b:The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time|1618|The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time|Mark Haddon|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1327882682s/1618.jpg|4259809], but was as enjoyable. Haddon portrays the workings of a family and hangers-on in an extremely believable fashion. That’s not to say that everything that happens in the book is totally believable – as is almost always necessary for interesting fiction, situations and events are stretched a little torward the fantastic, but once that is accepted, the book has the potential to resonate quite strongly with the reader.

I especially enjoyed how we switched among the different characters’ points of view, and when we were in the heads of the people who were around my age, I thought, “Yeah, that’s how we see the elders,” and likewise when in the elders’ heads it was, “Yeah, that’s how I imagine the elders see people of my generation.”

One detraction was the bewilderingly long list of tertiary characters in the book – I couldn’t keep half of them in my head for more than 10 pages at a time. That being said, maybe it was intentional, because many of the principals couldn’t either.

Well worth a read.