I loved this book! It was so full of symbolism I kind of wished I was reading it for school, because I'm sure I missed a lot. It was sad, and several scenes were very violent and hard to read through. The main character is not likeable, in fact he makes lots of bad decisions that affect other peoples lives very negatively. I do not think it is so much a story of redemption, as it is a story of learning how to live with the guilt of mistakes you've made and trying to learn and move on as much as possible from those mistakes. It was beautifully written, I learned a lot, cried a little and by the end I felt like I had read a very important book. Stories like this are proof that not every book needs to have a happy ending or morally good characters. Sometimes a book can make a bigger impact by being simply realistic.