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Title: A Miserable Book
Review: I was also sucked in by the comparrisons to David Sedaris. David Sedaris has subtlty and wit and relevence. This book, not so much. Even on its own merrits though, I couldn't recommend it. The writing is about comparable to a university memoir seminar writing course. Meaning that it's not poorly written, but it's not great either. More important though was that Burroughs doesn't really make the characters human enough to care what it is going on with them. I'm fine with dark comedy and writing about difficult times, but not when I couldn't care less about who is telling the story and who is in it. The final message about learning to survive and taking those survival skills doesn't come until the last line of the book. The rest of it just feel like treading water. The pay off wasn't worth it.
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