The first non sci fi PKD book I have read and I enjoyed it. Very easy to read, a few characters that he regularly uses in his novels. Excellent comparison of a 'not normal' person with some so called 'normal' people. I really enjoyed the chapters that were told from the perspective of the brother, very detailed and often OCD view of the world. I much liked how he described people driving on the roads that they were familiar with. ( )

Could have been edited down a lot. Dick repeats himself, takes a long time narrating irrelevant things, and I don't believe all of it is deliberate. It makes for a really boring book. And what's more is that it is just so misanthropic, without any interesting edge to it. But I don't know. Maybe this says something really insightful about middle-class families in the American 1950s, as the back of the book says? Lives boring and comfortable like those bred contempt and self-sabotaging behavior, I guess. Fair enough. But the book is just a depressing and boring drag, even if it might have some true observations. And that's only if it does.

It's also worth saying that this book is uncharacteristically misogynistic for a PKD book. In his other books it's clear that PKD is like pathetically in love with women, but the mechanism of this book relies so much on this nasty view of men and women. It's just a bad picture I think no matter how you look at it. ( )

I forgot when I packed this for my trip that this is Dick's one non-sf novel. While it drags a bit in places, it ends up being a cutting send-up of the upper-middle-class in Northern California in the 50s. Everyone in this book is terrible -- but mostly in interesting ways. I spent most of the book swinging wildly between rooting for Jack's probably sociopathic sister Fay and rooting for her comeuppance. In some ways Jack seems the most sane of the bunch, until he falls in with an end-of-the-world group and things feel for a bit like they're on more familiar Dick territory.

I probably wouldn't have read this had it been by anyone else, but it was fascinating to see Dick's non-genre work. ( )

Personajes fieles al universo de PKD, envueltos en un entorno mas cotidiano que lo habitual pero manteniendo visiones particulares. ( )

I've read bland books by PKD but this was something else. It was like a bad fever dream. Phil is really good at writing unlikeable characters, so kudos for that. Rating: Drudgery. ( )