Rare for a book to make me angry. But I am. I got angry halfway through this book and I stayed angry. It's a coming of age book in which no one comes of age, regardless of how old time makes them. Discontented, I started noticing em dashes (lots) and questions asked me (more.) If Barnes/character could not answer, by damn, his editor needed to make him. And now he's got me talking like my grandfather. I began bookmarking the self-aggrandizing, unconscious statements about the main character's behavior he blames on the woman of the moment. After a luncheon in which the stunningly egotistical narrator talks for an hour about himself, the next paragraph begins "Yes, I knew what she'd done. She'd managed to spend an hour in my company without divulging a single fact..." Aargh. And Sebastian Barry's On Canaan's Side was listed for the prize. Bah. I'm taking my disgruntled self to bed.