Taxi Driver avant le lettre? Recommended to fans of Lagerqvist's The Dwarf, American Psycho, or The Killer inside Me, or maybe Why Does Herr R Run Amok.

Keep at it until the end when it assumes a Darger-like lyrical intensity. ( )

My god, I am a sucker for depictions of madness, and Earl Summerfield runs the gamut of many ways human madness can express itself. This is not the tale of someone descending into madness. It is the tale of a full-bore madman from the very beginning.

I generally do not read reviews of books before I review them myself but I read some other opinions out there before I began this review. There are some for whom Earl Summerfield is the precursor to the modern Everyman, a person made mad by the world around me. For me this did not ring true. Earl was not made mad. He is mad. He is mad because he is a misogynistic paranoid with violent tendencies. This conclusion did not make this book any the less a compelling read. Connell could not have done a better job painting a picture of a repellent, insane human being.

Read the rest of the review here: http://ireadoddbooks.com/?p=263 ( )