Yes, the characters are impossibly extreme, butthey are not there to be 'real'. If it were 'real'it wouldn't be fiction. She said she is a romantic,and that the characters are 'What we should be'.Just wanted to say that first.The symbols and ideas of the book however, arealmost impossibly real. Honesty (the best policy)takes on a different tone in this book, Self-honesty.The sex scenes are good, the speeches are long, theplot is easy to figure out 50 pages ahead of you, butyou don't know the end (unlike King/Koontz/ect).