I struggled with this book. I came to it very eagerly because I was familiar with another book of short stories by the same author. The problem I mostly had was that I really disliked the characters. I liked Cohen Davies, the protagonist, well enough. We met this young man at the beginning of the book in a prison cell. The main thrust of the book was to tell the story leading up to his imprisonment. We learn about his family (mom, dad, and brother Ryan), his boss Clarence at work, and his new flirtatious neighbor, Allie Catherine Crosbie. As things began to go wrong, I had this thought that I would like to take Cohen out of this novel completely and put him in another story with kinder, gentler people.

As the story came to its conclusion, I finally saw the need for everything that went wrong to be that way...as it was indeed the reason he had been sentenced to prison. The end of the book had a plot twist which I found interesting enough, but then the very end...was vague. Why...after reading through the entire story...was there no real outcome? I felt cheated in a way. ( )