Seriously. I reiterate. How did this win a Pulitzer. Must have been a real sparse field that year.
This is not a great novel about a kid dealing with grief (Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close did it way better). This is not a novel about addiction (read Infinite Jest instead). So, what is the novel about? Just read the last 20 pages and let the author tell you, because she will. Oh, it's disguised as a monologue from the best friend, whose personality made me wonder why he was actually a best friend, and from the narrator, who up to the last was a sort of blank slate nobody, but it reads like the cliff notes some undergrad would crib to write a not very good term paper on this thing.

Part 1: I love New York, so honestly I would have read this no matter what. Theo's mom is basically a manic pixie dream girl, always doing interesting things, being quirky, and generally beloved by all. Thankfully we are rid of her in a few chapters. (This is not a spoiler.) Then some boring shit happens and we move to a new locale.

Part 2: Mostly nothing happens for what feels like hundreds of pages. The villains here - the alcoholic dad, his sorta slutty girlfriend - are beyond predictable. We've heard this story a hundred times before. Pretty sure this entire section only exists for two reasons, which are to

Spoiler

kill off Dad and move the painting (which by now I am beyond caring about)

. And introduce Boris, I guess. Boris, Boris, Boris. As a character I guess he was interesting, or at least semi funny, unlike everybody else in the book, but again--the

Spoiler

troubled compulsive liar

thing is, like, so not interesting to me.

Part 3? Is going back to New York another part? This was actually the most interesting section, but again it dragged on way too long.

Part Whatever: Amsterdam. It is preposterous that this

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drugged up putz manages to get himself involved in an international art heist or trade or whatever you want to call it. At some point any reasonable person would say, know what? It's not worth it (my walk-away point would have been before visiting the crime lord's apartment with the homeless druggies overdosing on the floor, but let's say you made it that far, that'd be a great time to jump on your nopetopus and get out of town).

But assuming you can suspend disbelief better than I can and can picture our boy Sir Blank going through with this, even then this section isn't that interesting because Blankenstein spends most of it in bed.

The ending is the only one that could have worked but it definitely feels like, was that really it? After all those pages? And then the goddamn monologue.

The only reason I kept going is because, remember, this won the Pulitzer. Something was going to happen that salvaged this mess and turned it into a great work of art. And instead we get pages and pages of "hey, did you want to know what this book was about? Let me tell you!" Actually maybe that part was needed for all the readers who fell asleep halfway through.

And this didn't just win the Pulitzer, but in fact seems to have won every other prestigious literary award or recognition there is. I believe in nothing anymore.