Brautigan's (pre-)teen narrator is so convincing that while reading this I occasionally wished I could see things in the specific kind of suprarational way that kids do. And, invariably, very soon after I'd wish to never to do any such thing because the narrator's kid-dismay at the age, scale and caprice of the world is just as convincing.

The death that the book builds up to (not a spoiler; build-up begins in the first paragraph) is a bit underwhelming for me. With his otherworldliness of character that fairly screams 'I'm too beautiful for this cruel world,' the departed reminds me unhappily of George Arthur in Tom Brown's School Days. Brautigan isn't tasteless and mawkish like Hughes, obviously, but it's unfortunate that what feels like artifice only intrudes at the climax of an otherwise wholly real story. Especially when that realness is the lurking ubiquity of death—wartime, post-War, post-post-Depression, and small-town exile death.