The author is the thinly disguised central character as are his parents. The richness of the Book I found were the voices of the characters as they narrate the various chapters . I read the First chapter and found it to be very funny and then I heard Ben read it at a forum and then recognized the poetry , he is a famous poet and was before he became a famous author. Adam is the "cool kid" and National champion in extemporaneous speaking and a champion debater . His criticism of the absurdity of a winning strategy in HS debate called" The spread" will be familiar to any lay judge who has listened to a HS debate and wondered what the hell was happening and why would anyone try to persuade another with an overwhelming volume of points delivered at the speed of the a drug commercial list of side effects . His interaction with his parents, both transplanted New Yorker's, and psychologists at the world famous Menninger Foundation . The descriptioons of characters from that psychiatric community is both entertaining and enlightening. His mother who had through her feminist psychology had aggravated some disturbed men who would call her and express their outrage and the way she managed their anger has an element of both pathos and humor . I found the most interesting part of the book to be a description of the character Darren who is at a minimum slow and the focus of adolescent humiliation while the peers appear to include him . His character morphs into a social outcast and he joins a local church devoted to the hatred of homosexuals . Adams great aunt who was a doctor before the Holocaustand now resides in a nursing home in a state of dementia is another interesting character as the staff permits her to live out her harmless fantasy. Adam as a father joining with his activist wife and the children in a protest and his interaction with authority is a also a good story . There are many entertaining stories many with much deeper meanings and Ben writes beautifully and so the words alone and the way they are put together is worth the read.