I'm honestly not quite sure what to make of this. The prose is unambiguously good: vivid and subtle and direct all at once, and there are frequently turns of phrase that made me stop reading just so I could read them again. The subject matter is fairly confronting - a group of teenage boys focused almost entirely on drugs and sex (and sometimes art) and one of them gets involved with a pair of sadists and there's actual shit-eating until his arse is literally sliced up, but he's so high on drugs that it barely seems to register. As challenging as the subject matter is, it's still fairly dramatic and I should be riveted (even given the cynical nothing-matters tone)... but I'm not. It's a bit like watching a slow motion model train wreck after a few glasses of wine: all disintegrating, fascinating style to tart up substance.