Oh, Tiller! ( )

So good. Beautifully, wittily, soulfully written. Just wonderful characters and wonderful protagonist. Excellent book.

I’m sure some people would love this, but not my kind of novel. Sort of a shaggy-dog adventure story about a 20 year-old-kid who gets involved in 30 kinds of weird things. I think it might be a summertime beach-read for male college students? Anyway, not for me. ( )

Tiller was an unremarkable bougie college kid who expected little of himself or anyone else. Then, improbably, he gets swept up in a pan-Asian business adventure with a very strange cast of characters. What at first seems like a rather adolescent male fantasy grows progressively dark and disturbing. We learn the story of Tiller's "year abroad" in flashbacks from his current situation in a drab U.S. suburb where he has established himself in a surprisingly tender relationship with a brilliant, spectrum-y 8-year-old boy and his lovely, damaged mother. ( )

One of the weirdest books I've read, some strange characters & scenes. This coming of age and look at the pursuit of wealth, happiness and love will maybe be better in the thoughts it leaves with me. This was certainly out of my normal reading. ( )