John Hawkes obfuscates a very thin plot and flat characters with mellifluous prose. He does this in his other books, but the main character of this one partakes in infantile fantasies for the majority of the pages, slobbering, excreting, and generally having what Hawkes might have thought was an erotic epiphany at the time, but which was really nothing except random self-indulgence and ordinary teenage excretion. What happens cannot be said to be relevant, interesting or sensical if you bother to expend time and energy determining what exactly is happening beneath all of the circuitous, grasping, saccharine lyricism. Only read if you are mesmerized by John Hawkes' dastardly, grievous, chortling surrealism or looking for a poetically written piece of smut. ( )

Good scenes: The prostitute described as going down on him like a hungry lioness while putting a finger up his bum. The riot at the woman's prison. The flashback where as a child he is looking at a horse vagina and the woman/guardian shames him and then the horse drenches him with urine. Then when his guardian makes him have sex in front of him. Apart from these odd perverted scenes this book is kind of rambling and stupid. ( )