This is a good novel if, and only if, your most profound ideas of the real world have been formed by cartoons from Hustler magazine.It is, in a word, gross. Its subject is sex and violence, and not believably rendered, either. Plot development is piecemeal, character description is barely enough to form a consistent mental picture, and its themes are a series of clichés alternating with pop-schlock movie images and highly questionable pseudo-psychological insights, such as, if you let a big guy beat the crap out of you, it will make him cry. (I'm sure if the author could track me down, he'd make my head explode, pick my broken teeth out of the flesh of his knee, and end up completely covered with my blood...all except for the whites of his eyes.)On the other hand, from reading the other reviews here on Amazon it becomes clear that this is a novel written for male adolescents, and that they like it just fine. So who am I to say?