Deeply soporific. The protagonist, a convinced invalid suffering primarily from terminal whininess, monologues his way through 150 odd pages. It felt longer. I was inescapably reminded of Lolita - not due to the subject matter (they could not be more different there) but because of the same deadening homogeneity of tone. It's so absolutely, tiresomely consistent - a mosquito-drone of a text - that it's hard to stay awake long enough to credit the effect of the portrait. And credit is due: as with Nabokov, Bernhard's unpleasant protagonist is very, very finely drawn. It's unmistakeably an intelligent and skilful piece of writing and I can admire it for that even though the overall effect, for me, is one of general tedium.