Martyr!

A little uneven (it could have used more editing, especially toward the end), but overall I thought it was very good. The writing sparkled throughout most of the book. There was a chapter about 1/3 of the way through that switched to the father's perspective - his thoughts about being a parent, his job working with other immigrants at a chicken facility in Indiana, etc. - and it was quite moving. The book was also surprisingly funny, despite addressing some rather serious topics, like addiction/recovery and how to have a meaningful life (and death).

This guy crammed every “insightful” or “profound” observation or opinion he had when he was 19 into this semi-autobiographical “anti-hero,” a loathsome pretentious self-obsessed hipster.

Every page revealed new horrors of gobsmacking incompetence.

A character actually says “I remember [that thing] really heebying my jeebies” and doesn’t immediately get strangled.

There are three separate metaphors about “a bowl of milk”:

• "Something delicate released in my chest, like a gold ring dropping in a bowl of milk."
• "A few stars floated around like the last Cheerios in a bowl of black milk."
• "Dark clouds against a bright sky, like blackberries in a bowl of milk."

This book is bad.

It was good! There was a plot point early on that kind of fucked with my suspension of disbelief and bugged me like a splinter the whole rest of the read, and some neatness in the plot that I wasn't totally buying/in the mood for. But I'm a sucker for expert prose, subtly handled subject matter, and readability so it won me over.