It's one of those books that works better in theory than in practice. It starts off excellent, and then, in its demonstration of showing the narrator's distance from all the important events, spends a lot of time dwelling on stuff that really isn't important. The first half is much more interesting than the second. It was still good, and impressive, but it just doesn't work out as well when you're several pages into details the narrator is obsessed with that don't end up mattering in the long run.