This novel dares you not to love it. It's so awfully horribly unremittingly sad yet open-hearted and quirky and forlorn and it wags its tail furiously, all the time. This novel is all about suicide, to be or not to be. In this case, the genius concert pianist sister has opted for NOT TO BE and the narrator is trying to put the case for TO BE. And it's kind of not a novel either, it's a the high-end literary version of the misery memoir, like Ugly by Constance Briscoe (her mother sued over that one, and lost : http://www.theguardian.com/books/2008...) or A Million Little Pieces by James Frey, which started out as a best selling memoir and then got exposed as a million big lies and then got repackaged as a novel and went straight to the top of the fiction charts, you have to love that. Because I find out this book is closely based on events in Miriam Toews' real life. I recently read Girl, Interrupted - and I watched My Sister's Keeper too. And some other movies I ended up watching recently like Maps to the Stars, Requiem for a Dream, The Motel Life, Shame, the Three Colours trilogy and Miss Violence have been all in the same ball park too. And you know, they're all good movies (apart for Maps to the Stars - David Cronenberg, what were you thinking?). AMPS might even be a good novel, but it was so drenched in tears and sodden with unrequited longing and remorse that it was hard to make out. It disintegrated in my hands. I tried reading it with a hairdryer blowing on each page but still they came apart. All the other reviewers in the world five star this. They're made of sterner stuff or maybe their copies were printed on thicker paper. After page 135 I couldn't take it any more. AMPS was where I got overdosed. Too much is too much. I'm going to put a Leonard Cohen record on for some light relief now. Dance me to the end of love, Leonard.