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Hm this book was rough.

It was hard to say what the purpose of this novel is, why it was written, besides "what if depression was externalized as a black hole - isn't that a neat idea?". Besides that it was a lot of dull, two-dimensional horrible characters, sort of doing little inconsequential things.

I read this largely because it was about working in tech in San Francisco while being sort of miserable and/or disenchanted with life/tech/etc. I lived this for six years and I thought maybe this would be an enjoyable if slight read. Alas, I found this book to be repulsively boring.

I am baffled that there appear to be many five star reviews of this book. I'm trying to understand the target audience for this, and more than that what qualities would make that audience give it a 4/5 star review. I think are undeniably more deft handlings of depression in fiction - ones that make artful observations about depression, and even have a compelling story - even though it left me a little cold, My Year of Rest and Relaxation is undeniably more interesting and more successful. It doesn't even have the benefit of being very salacious.

The stylistic flourishes in this novel, for example the definitions in different chapters, felt pretty gimmicky and didn't add much - while it might make sense as an organizing principle, its hard to say how it adds to the novel, besides maybe being perceived as cleverness? yikes. The level of writing is worse than you'd find in the New Yorker, as is the handling of ideas - of which there are not many.