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Oct 23, 2017Indoorcamping rated this title 5 out of 5 stars
New York Times Book Review Podcast recommends some amazing books you'd never notice or pick up because they're old, weird, yet historical and important and always, always, always the best books I've read in a long time. I'm not a person who would pick up this book, certainly. It's a male narrator, not my thing, a novel, not my thing, about drinking, I don't, and really dark and failing, not pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps which is about all I read. Yet, yet. I enjoy it so much. It's written so well and so funny in a how bad can it get? kind of way. Like how much of a loser can the protagonist be without you not obsessing over hoping someone comes to his rescue, or worrying about how much damage he'll do over the course of the four days, or what his brother will come home to, or overall how does a person end up like this? Totally fascinating in an anthropological way for me, particularly since it is set in New York 1944 and you can practically smell the cigarette smoke and ladies' perfume while you absorb the atmosphere of intoxication.