I found this book very unpleasant to read. The POV character, a professional tower climber who at the beginning of the book witnesses a girl videotape her own suicide by drowning, is simply unlikeable in every possible way. He becomes obsessed with the drowned girl, and steals her things without reporting her death to the police. Then he tracks down her family using some very basic detective work, and for the next several months watches their anguish at not knowing what has happened to their daughter and sister. He dates the dead girl’s midget sister and plays one cruel, anonymous prank after another on her, never showing the slightest bit of feeling for her. The portrait of small-town North Carolina life given in this novel is bleak and hopeless, a series of pointless tragedies and random cruelties, where every human being lacks even common decency. There is no reason to like these people, their world or this book.