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Title: Excessive in all aspects
Review: Perhaps the goal of this novel is too grandiose, and that is why Wolff fails so obviously. Wolff tries to present each unique reader with a character that they can relate to, and instead ends up with a gang of stereotypes. He tries to show a family grappling with its problems, but the situations are so ridiculous that the book becomes a soap-opera-like melodrama. To some extent, this novel seems to be a bildungsroman, chronicling the growth of a boy into manhood. However, the childhood protagonist is hardly reconcilable to the adult, and the reader has trouble sympathizing with either. To see a family in crisis dissected more accurately, see Judith Guest's ORDINARY PEOPLE.
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