While I appreciated many things about the book, in my opinion it failed to live up to the rave reviews it has received from many. There were a number of really interesting characters in the novel but I didn't feel that I really learned their motivations; therefore it felt somewhat superficial to me. I read the whole book because I was curious about the outcome and I liked the characters but in the end, I was disappointed. If you don't understand why a couple split apart then you can't understand why they re-united. If you don't understand how a man who is so intelligent and optimistic could also do illegal and violent things, then we can't understand his murder. If we don't understand how a usually shy guy decides to rescue a man who allegedly jumped off a roof, then we don't understand why he loses himself in a silent reverie of his childhood while talking to the jumper. It doesn't make sense to me and I wanted it to make sense, to make the characters believable and understandable. Although maybe that was the point, that we never really know everything there is to know about a person and have to be content with the bits & pieces we do know and the incomprehesibility of the rest.