The novel lacks a cohesive sense of progression or development, either through the resolution of external conflict or through the development of any key characters. Sure, Louis sort of comes to the realization that he is in love with his best friend, but even that is a development that comes with neither struggle or cost.

Or perhaps that nagging feeling left with the reader is not dissatisfaction due to the lack of resolution, but rather an anxious impatience with the monotonous way the story is rendered. A friend's wake is described in the same tone and pace as the description of a neighbourhood project designed to rebel against taxi drivers racing through the alleys around their streets. 

The notable exceptions to this trend -- the fevered description of Louis' attempt to save Liora's kitten from death or the powerful account of the Louis' heartbreaking frustration upon returning home to find that the ill cat, he unwittingly left in the care of junkies, has died -- imply that it is not lack of skill but rather Rastelli's awkward attempt to impose a forced emotional distance from his main character in an attempt to fictionalize his own life. 

The best moments in this book suggest that that was harder for Rastelli to do in parts. Perhaps it would have been the book would have been better if Rastelli avoided the pretense of fiction and just wrote a memoir.

Devon Shepherd is a Vancouver based writer.