A simultaneously lucid and dreamlike Trainspotting for the American Midwest. And it's as funny as it is poignant. 
 At first, I read everything at simple face value, drinking in bleary mood and vague, impressionistic set pieces. After a few stories, though, the disjointed action began to leave me looking for broader connections and meanings. But in the end, I'm content to leave it alone. If I find myself grasping at epiphany that skims fingertips but stays just out of reach and hazy, well, then I'm only that much closer to the bewildered narrator who recounts it. I think the sense of fleeting and half-seen meaning, here, is in some ways more strongly felt and significant than that meaning itself. 
 "We were grimy and tired. Usually we felt guilty and frightened, because there was something wrong with us, and we didn't know what it was; but today we had the feeling of men who had worked." 
 "'There's so much goop inside of us, man ... and it all wants to get out.'" 
 "'What did you say when she shot you?' 
 'I said, you shot me!' 
 'Both times? Both wives?' 
 'The first time I didn't say anything because she shot me in the mouth.'"