If you are a casual reader looking for a breezy summer read, please keep looking. This novel is a mental workout. Vian's style might not be for the novice reader, but his story resonates well after laying this novel aside, whether to recover from it, to cogitet further on it, or to redirect one's thoughts to the rest of one's life. His characters seem to be acting in an unending drug-induced state of hyper-focus and unreality, but the story of brilliant, misguided, funny, sometimes cruel lives inextricably twined is told seamlessly.