This book was a challenge for me. On the one hand, it'a well-written dystopia with humor as dry as a desert afternoon. On the other hand, it uses the tropes A Man who is Just Trying To Get By and Loves His Children and has Martial Problems and Everyone Around Him Is A Jerk so much that I wanted to gag. Human compassion not only thrown out the window in this book, but it might have never existed in the first place. Saunders' brutal, bleak, and borderline sociopathic future is one I never, ever want to see.