Oddball, accident-prone Warren Spooner doesn’t so much get along with life as crash into it head-on. Through the awkward scrapes of his childhood, to a violent and troubled adulthood, the young man is nothing if not resilient, standing up to adversity in his own dark (often extremely dark) ways.

Hilarious and heartbreaking, US National Book Award-winner Pete Dexter’s autobiographical magnum opus is nothing short of a tragicomic tour de force.