Oh, I wanted to like this better than I did. Don't get me wrong, I still enjoyed it. In places it actually reminded me of Mervyn Peake, who's one of my favourite authors, and the idea is fantastic: a collection of related short stories, apparently influenced by Schulz's own childhood, but with a magical realist tinge that mostly comes out in the figure of the father of the family. I think what's holding it up for me is that it's just so much description - very pretty description, often very effective description, but it's hardly ever leavened by anything else. I needed it broken up with conversation, or with something, but it just wasn't... and so gorgeously written as it was, there was more than a whiff of the soporific about it.