No doubt this kind of storytelling appeals to some readers, especially older teens who have an appreciation for the dark and twisted themselves. But even they may be frustrated by the writing, which is often so deliberately opaque that the reader may wonder whether the author is hiding something -- or assume she has nothing much to say. Amid all the run-on sentences and arcane language, it often seems as if Lanagan is trying so hard to sound clever and literary that she has completely lost her train of thought.