If you've never read Berger's works, start with this one, which I just reread after about twenty years. Still holds up--and better. Berger is so good at dramatizing the internal monologues of small-town losers that you can't believe how good he is and how funny, even when the writing isn't laugh-out-loud. He homes in on their cliches, values, and assumptions so well. A friend of mine just said, "Berger should be and should have been given full Postwar Literary Lion treatment. They're all fading now: Go to the store and the only one who still commands half a shelf or more is Kurt Vonnegut. But Berger should have shone alongside John Updike and more brightly than Philip Roth." Amen. This is Berger at his best. ( )

A rough and tumble foray into an earlier time when violence and bigotry reigned supreme. Unsettling in its easy to read narrative. Disconcerting in its portrayal of real America. ( )