4.5 stars 
 "I love how, whenever you tell me a story, you go backwards and forwards and tell me everything else that could possibly be happening in every direction, like an explosion. Like a flower blooming." 
 I am writing this in the same way I read the last 100 pages of Grasshopper Jungle: sitting on my bed, listening to my next-door neighbour doing very loud (very bad) karaoke. 
 This is not relevant. 
 So a lot of people feel pretty meh about grasshopper jungle; they thinking it is a combination of (1) too weird (2) too violent and (3) annoying and repetitive. 
 For point number (1), I liked weird shit. This was weird shit. I liked it. It's exactly like something I would make up in my head, causing myself to start laughing hysterically at 8 in the morning on a bus. This is my kind of weird. It's ridiculous. It's great fun. 
 Now for number (2). So I am a massive wuss. I am very easily freaked out and am scared of almost everything. I am not, however, scared of 6-foot-tall grasshoppers. Even when they're described brutally killing people. It's just so utterly ridiculous. 
 Finally, number (3). This is the thing I get the most - the way this book is written, it is pretty repetitive, and we get a lot of back story about minor characters and loads of other random information. For the most part, I really liked this. I'm always interested in the minor characters in books, and all the little snippets of information but a lot of stuff was repeated a lot, which wasn't really necessary, and all the background info does get pretty annoying towards the end when you're more interested in the actual plot than the antics of Austin's great-grandfather. Regardless, I don't think this annoyed me nearly as much as it did a lot of other people. Austin also talks about sex a lot. Like, seriously a lot. I found this mostly amusing but get that it could get annoying. 
 I actually really loved this book. It's funny and ridiculous and completely original - the characters are brilliant, flawed yet loveable and I really feel like I got to know Austin so much better than you generally get to know a book's main character. I completely get why people weren't keen on this, but it was so me it was actually brilliant. 
 "All good books are about everything, abbreviated."