I read this about 4 years ago in one of my classes. The professor was the author’s friend and decided to assign it to a few of us. Before I selected it, he asked me if I could handle it. I said sure, not thinking that any book could have an impact on me to the point where I couldn’t handle it.

I could not handle it.

It may have been at a time when I was very impressionable, but I felt like a dark cloud was following me around for a long time after I put it down. I read it over Spring Break for a project due later. It’s a dream crusher, for sure. For me, hope that I had for the future was temporarily suspended for about 6 weeks. I moped around thinking that my life is just going to be a series of failed ventures and in the end, no matter how hard I work, I will never get a good result. It’s a mighty tough read, and you have to know who you are and be confident in where you’re going in order to read it.

That’s my opinion (my teacher thought this book was great), but reading this was definitely hard on me.