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My reaction to finishing this book was 'thank god that's over'. I thought it was interesting in the abstract, but at times I couldn't stand reading it. The unreliable main character Oskar, decides to stop growing at the age of three . He refuses to speak, and communicates by banging on his titular drum. I gather this is supposed to reflect German societies refusal to accept the realities of the rise of Nazism and their complicity in it. But I don't really care. My problem with the book wasn't the confusing structure, the occasional nasty scene (don't read this book if you're planning on eating eels anytime soon) but that I just couldn't stand the writing. I'm guessing that much of the humor was lost in translation, but what irritated me the most were the lame lyrical sections. Sentences like "long after I had lain down I was still standing on coconut fibres, and that is why I was unable to sleep; for nothing is more stimulating, more sleep-dispelling, more thought provoking than standing barefoot on a coconut fiber map" are pretty much bullshit (and it doesn't help that I heard Werner Herzog in my head when I read them). And there are a lot of them in this book. There's not enough realism to make the magic interesting. The crazy characters are intersting and funny at first, but there's no connection between them, and after a while their strangeness gets boring and repetitive. I really wanted to like this book, and I know a lot of people love it, but I'm never reading this one again. Maybe I'll try the movie.