It is brilliant but it's not straightforward. You have to be willing to deal with an incredibly unreliable narrator. Plus you have to read it as comedy so you notice the subtle jokes. Like when he's in a posh restaurant and orders "free range squid."
Also until you realize patrick is gay you can miss the homoeroticism and not realize that the riduclous sex scenes are meant to be ridiculous because they only exist in his mind and he has no idea what heterosexual sex is like.
Plus, there may be a problem with it having some references that were clear back then but less so now. For example in the 80s closeted gay men were accused of being "serial killers" because the thought was that they were why straight women were dying of AIDS. Wall Street bankers were also being accused of being serial killers because their mergers were putting people out of work and causing people to commit suicide. Patrick is both, so even though he's not a real killer the society the book is mocking would have been accusing him of being one.
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Date: 2015-10-06 04:26 am (UTC)Also until you realize patrick is gay you can miss the homoeroticism and not realize that the riduclous sex scenes are meant to be ridiculous because they only exist in his mind and he has no idea what heterosexual sex is like.
Plus, there may be a problem with it having some references that were clear back then but less so now. For example in the 80s closeted gay men were accused of being "serial killers" because the thought was that they were why straight women were dying of AIDS. Wall Street bankers were also being accused of being serial killers because their mergers were putting people out of work and causing people to commit suicide. Patrick is both, so even though he's not a real killer the society the book is mocking would have been accusing him of being one.