We've got your back. With the Tough-O-Meter, you'll know whether to bring extra layers or Swiss army knives as you summit the literary mountain. (10 = Toughest)
(6) Tree Line
It's all sex, drugs, and alcohol for Bob Slocum.
Okay, minus the drugs.
But Something Happened is far from a Leave It to Beaver depiction of suburban American life. The book is kind of complex in its themes, which touch on middle-age worries, marital complications, adultery, and office politics. Slocum hashes vignettes in non-linear fashion, leaving readers to reconstruct reality from his accounts of what happened. His reliability as a narrator is thrown into question when his talks of going mad accelerate toward the book's conclusion, and even he can no longer keep straight what has actually happened.
So, yeah, you might have to work a little harder to keep up in this one. But that's what we're here for.