The second half of the book can't sustain the first's sheer rush of interest, even though it does a damn good job of still being smart and dark and a-little-too-close-to-home. If you are a twentysomething - an intelligent one - you will find something intriguing about this book. I'm not saying you'll like it - and I'm not saying that non-twentysomethings won't like it - but you will associate with it, in the way we all (whether we wanted to or not) associated with Garden State.

It's dark and evocative and scary and sad and funny and mostly... it feels like real life, tomorrow. Is it a perfect novel? No. But it is a damn good one and I hope it makes it out of the first round in the Tournament of Books or at least gains a wider readership because of its inclusion. Because this is a book that has, unjustly, languished in obscurity. But maybe that's because it's a little too true, at its core. It touches something elemental, something universal, that we're all feeling... and that isn't necessarily a pleasant sensation all the time.


More about the dark mirror of this novel to our own reality at RB: http://wp.me/sGVzJ-ivyland ( )