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Most people have rated this book very highly so it must have been a serious emotional experience for them. It vies with Hanya Yanagihara's recent A Little Life as the weepiest, most depressing literary fiction so far this century. If you like reading about the suicides of gay boys and men, of adults sexually abusing choir boys, of children killing their parents, of gay men drifting aimlessly through life, damaged by their childhoods, seemingly connected to their friends but actually suffering in terrible emotional isolation, then you'll love both these books.

Neither are my taste at all. And I am a gay man, a member of the target audience. Sorry. For not liking Edinburgh, I mean.

It was published in November, 2001, a most unpropitious moment just after 9/11, which probably ruined its market value since nobody wanted to read depressing books at that awful time. It's probably taken until nearly now for readers to want those types of books again, at least in quantities worth publishing.

Here's something interesting: in Chee's acknowledgements he gives special mention to Hanya Yanagihara for her help, this back in 2001. And now in 2015 we have Yanagihara's book which is remarkably similar to Chee's in tone, character, and purpose, which is to elicit the maximum amount of tears as possible. This has been an admirable literary goal for centuries, but appreciating such a calculated work is a matter of taste.

Going a bit further, one could speculate, just for fun, that Chee and Yanagihara both had similar books in them back in 2001, but she was fortunate not to write and publish just after 9/11, perhaps even waiting until now when the reading public was willing to pay. Fun stuff. But not the books.