Veins

I read this book because I enjoy the author's Toothpaste for Diner webcomic (and being so short and cheap, the investment was minimal).

The book shines as an outsider's view looking in. The protagonist has no real friends, essentially no family, and yet never stops trying to fit in no matter how much rejection he faces. His understanding of how the world should be is based on pop culture and very little reality, and when he's forced to reconcile the differences, it can be quite entertaining:

"Everyone tells you to look forward to swimming, but it's just another lie. You imagine that it's fun and you splash, and everyone is stripped down all the way like it's a party. That's not what it's like. The water in the pool is poisoned so it doesn't grow mold, and when you go in it, your skin feels really terrible and hurts."

But the book falters a bit in that the protagonist is unaware/confused/slow to the point of being mentally handicapped. I'm not saying the book shouldn't have been this way; perhaps it added needed depth that would have been absent had the protagonist merely been naive and selfish. But for me, my feeling sorry for the protagonist in his inability to grasp basic understandings of accepted social behavior, and wishing that a single, sane person would take some time to set him straight, drained some energy from the story that prevented me from rating it higher.

That said, part of what makes Veins work on some level is how realistic it is. People keep to themselves; we turn away when something awkward happens. The well-worn fictional formula of a mentally disadvantaged person finding someone to take care of him or push him toward a happier existence probably doesn't happen nearly as often as we'd like to think. There's no real happy ending... not even much of an ending at all. But if there's any solace to be found in finishing this book, it's knowing that the protagonist doesn't really expect life to be happy, so he's probably not as disappointed with his demise as the reader may me.