Instruct: Classify Amazon reviews into positive or negative sentiment
Query: One-trick pony

Richard Schmitt tells his own life story, where our rootless loser-hero "finds himself", in of all places, the circus--the home of misfits, freaks, and derelicts. Ironic, isn't it? The author ensures that we don't miss this rather obvious point by repeating it a few times. The jobs and locations change, but finally the reader realizes that nothing else has, and at heart, our hero is still just a guy who prefers to slop through life except now he can earn a little more money to throw away. Amazingly, Schmitt concludes his greasy saga with a picture of pastoral life, now suddenly a contented man with the unexplained arrival of a wife and daughter. To round out this artificial ending, he tosses in a tearjerker story of his dog's death.(I'm not kidding) Richard Schmitt deserves credit for providing such an honest portrayal of himself, but I don't find that person particularly interesting, and that's the last thing that I would have expected from a story about life in the circus.