I read about 200 of the 260 pages of this novel and couldn't go on: my shelves have too many unread books to spend more time on it.

The main character -- a boutique banker who's beyond obsessed with the number 34 -- interested me at first because he was so compulsive. I enjoyed some of the humor. But. Pelevin is Pelevin, so things suddenly got too conceptualist and wacky and crowded and ridiculous for me. Among other things, he tosses in his twist on Eastern philosophy (yawn), a phallic object/lingam with a pen gun inside (holy complicated multiple metaphors, Dr. Freud!), Madonna (again?), a priest disguise (call in the masks), an antipode governed by 43 (snort), a portrait of Putin (*sigh*), and Pokemon (ой!). It's just too much. ( )

You rule the numbers or the numbers rule you? Not Pelevin's best but still an entertaining and grotesque mirror of a certain part of the modern russian society. ( )