If nothing else this book would make an ideal film with a cast of characters - good, bad and indifferent. Personally I found the book just as much about Regina,his mother, than about Wally the protagonist. We are part of her interior world, listening to her voices and seeing what really isn't there. Wally knows none of this. He only sees the apparent disintegration of his mother but we are on the inside looking out and can understand where she is coming from. Wally admits that they never knew one another nor had the least desire to do so. Regina stands out as a really 'done by' woman as they say, who suffered far more than her son. There are a lot of other characters in the book who are just as interesting - if not more so - than Wally and the latter chapters take a counter cultural stance as the 'boy now man' cannot bring himself to emotionally accept that the 'relationship' he had with a man when he was fourteen was detrimental to his emotional developement. He does realise that he was coming from such an emotionally disfunctional and cold household that any glimpse of emotional warmth would have been jumped on and seen as a lifeline - which Wally did. You must make your own mind up on that issue. It is a great read though and some of the chapters make hard reading and the focusing in and out of Regina's mind can be difficult to follow but never impossible. Totally absorbing and more than you think it will be.
