I’m a little conflicted here. I don’t really want to give the book 4 out of 5 – I want to give it 3 and 5. On the one hand, the individual chapters are fun to read – some of the sketches (skits?) are very funny, and I giggled out loud a number of times. On the other hand, they grew somewhat tiresome, as the same form was replayed over and over, and there’s only so much silliness even I can take.

For well over half of its pages, the book was plotless, and this made it hard to come back to – there was just too little incentive. As things moved on, though, a plot did develop, and more than that, I became appreciative of how Heller was weaving the small story snippets together, presenting information in a non-chronological puzzle whose shape gradually became more visible. As others have noted, the book would probably become better and better as it’s reread, but the rewards weren’t quite great enough the first time around for me to tackle it again right away.