Spooner Pete Dexter

Pete Dexter wrote at one time for our local newspaper, the Sacramento Bee; when his novel, Paris Trout, came out, and was awarded the National Book Award for fiction in 1988, I was eager to read it. It was one of the most profoundly disturbing things I have ever read. His new book, Spooner, is apparently largely autobiographical, and also disturbing. The writing is wonderful, but the characters are very challenged. Darkly disfunctional, but oddly real. Some of the incidents, like the burial at sea that goes horribly wrong, are funny, but some are just plain brutal. It's memorable, I'll give it that, but I have absolutely no idea if I liked it.