Instruct: Classify Amazon reviews into positive or negative sentiment
Query: Writer should write more than pretty sentences

The author clearly has a talent with language, there are many cleverly written passages in the book - and these are sometimes quite amusing. I wanted to like this book, but am putting it down at about 275 pages into it. The main character gives me no reason to care what he will do next. The catalog of characters are caricature comments on cultural (not just ethnic but class and attitude) stereotypes that wear out their initial delivery of comical observation. Perhaps this book is just too long for what it is. I liked - not loved - Absurdistan, and I found this novel to be more heavily inflicted with the problems of that book. Sorry, I tried, just couldn't care enough to finish it.