One of my favorite novels. There is just something here that is not anywhere else.

Reread: This is a book where the last 50 pages transform the first 200. It was not easy to get through the second time - I lagged through good chunks - but I was left with the same feeling of colossal emotional impact, of great loss, of the incredible love for the drug-addicted characters that threads the pages together. I'd recommend reading the author's note in the back both at the beginning and at the end. This book sits with me in my heart; I carry it, I look at the world through it.

'To our waiting heirs...who will not know the dreadful war we've gone through, and the losses we took, unless in some footnote in a history book they catch a notion. Some brief mention. With no list of the fallen.
There should be a monument somewhere, he thought, listing those who died in this. And worse, those who didn't die. Who had to live on, past death.'

'We really all were very happy for a while...but it was for such a terribly brief time, and then the punishment was beyond belief...In this lifestyle, the motto is "Be happy today, because tomorrow you are dying," but the dying begins all at once, and the happiness is a memory.'

'I, myself, am not a character in this novel; I am the novel.'

'I loved them all...In Memoriam.'