My girlfriend was out of town for the weekend so I picked this up at the bookstore and started it around 10:00 when I got off work. I told myself, "Maybe I'll just read a few stories and then go to bed." No dice. The stories grab you with their spacey lyricism and surreal feel as Boyle's truly warped imagination leaves readers stranded in a fantasy world so fimiliar that they never want to leave. The stories go from the unimaginable to the undeniable in a matter of sentences, as Boyle disamrms readers with his bleak, obtuse sense of humor -- allowing the stories to unlock feelings of pain, regreat, isolation, nostalgia and revelation long ignored as a result of taking onesself too seriously. A truly novel collection of stories.