This languished in the "TODO" section of my bookshelf for ages due to its strange subject matter and the fact that Eugenides's earlier work wasn't all that interesting. However, one day I started reading this, and after the two opening paragraphs, I was hooked. Gone was the passivity of The Virgin Suicides, replaced by descriptions of lives lived with unbounded zest. The only problem is that the book is entirely too short at 596 pages; the world cries out to know what happens to Cal afterwards.