I’m not giving this book a lower rating because Joe was a unlikable main character. I’m giving it a lower rating because I don’t think that that wasn’t intentional.

Thomas, as an author, in my opinion, sees Joe as a self sacrificing hero. I do not. This type of literary fiction should have a character that feels somewhat introspective, and I prefer that the character be at some sort of crossroad where they need to make some choices to change the pattern of their lives. 

Instead, Joe is stuck in a poor motorcycle. He and his friends bitching about child support and sleeping with their vindictive baby mothers because she might take it out on him or the kids.

I found his poor me text threads with friends to be pathetic. He simply too old to have an unexamined life. In the course of this book, I think I thought more about his decisions and explored his motivations more than he ever attempted to.

I can’t quite call this a deep character study. The things that we know for sure about Joe are that he is depressed oversexed and exhausted. I kept thinking OK now what. I never received the answer.

What this book does get right is the culture of violence and Philadelphia. I think some people would read this book and think the fact that he works in the hospital and his constantly seeing friends going in and out of the emergency room or ending up dead as a bit too coincidental or exaggerated. I lived my whole life and unfortunately that’s not true. This is the part of the book that fell grounded.
I also would’ve liked more concentration on his dissertation. He referenced some books that I’ve read, including Acres of Skin and I think that some readers might not realize that the experiments conducted at the prison and some of the sided books that Joe uses are real occurrences.