This was a quick read that kept me engaged, but felt, hot take, easily forgettable. Farragut, a drug addict, has been jailed for fratricide in Falconer prison. He goes through prison life recounting his former life , his below average marriage, his troubling relationship with his brother and his attempts to fight back against his imprisonment and subsequent dehumanization. Cheever raps on themes like crime and punishment, freedom, solitude, redemption, education and the class system, sex, love, pain and the living dead of the prison system, the fall of man, the bounds of mortality and prison reform.