One of my favorite books in a long time. Loved the characters and the author's details made me remember parts of my own childhood that I'd forgotten. ( )

not a mind-blowing piece of fiction, but certainly clever and insightful; a unique, entertaining read about kids in chicago in the 70s ( )

couldn't finish!! ( )

I read this because I live in the Chicago area. Not being from that neighborhood, nor jewish, I didn't have a lot in common with the characters. A good, but not great, book. ( )

On the surface, I really have nothing to relate to the characters in this book - while it's set in Chicago, it's not in a part of Chicago I've ever been to. Similarly, I'm not (nor have I ever been) a Jewish teenager, and the events of this book end a few months before I was even born. Still, the characters are incredibly and instantly understandable and sympathetic, even though they're not really nice people. Maybe because they're not nice people, makes them real. Also, this book is one of the funniest things I've read in a while, not in a Christopher Moore kind of way, but partly just from the pathetic realness of it all. The sections from the point of view of Larry the masturbator set me laughing uncontrollably for minutes at a time. ( )