I would rate this 3.75 stars but I relate more to the one star reviews, given the ending. It read like realism throughout then it became extremely ghoulish and bizarre in the last 45 pages, culminating in one of the worst endings I've ever read.

I keep thinking Paul Murray takes delight in all the bad reviews and outrage at the ending, as if he just meant to be clever and annoying in some perverse postmodernist way. I hate postmodernism.