What readers think of My Year Abroad, plus links to write your own review.

This book is bizarre. No, really (really!) bizarre. Each sentence is a little word explosion, a mind-boggling and manic amalgam of letters and punctuation that continue and continue one after another to form a book—a wildly bizarre, but incredibly creative, book.

Is it good? Yeah. Sort of. It's long. And breathless. And almost giddy. If a book could break into uncontrollable giggles, this one just might do that. So even though it is highly imaginative and even innovative, all of this makes reading it a bit exhausting at times. It's almost too much. Hence, four stars and not five.

Written by Pulitzer Prize finalist Chang-rae Lee, this is the convoluted story of 20-year-old Tiller Bardmon, an average guy in every sense of the word—from looks to accomplishments. He has finished his sophomore year at a small, elite college and is spending the summer at home in Dunbar, New Jersey, a Princeton stand-in, before his junior year abroad. While caddying for the first time ever, he meets Pong Lou, and Tiller's life changes practically overnight. Cue the bizarre. Because what happens to Tiller over the next few months is so unbelievable it's preposterous. But wait! Back up! There are two plotlines in the book, and one of them begins on the first page with what happens to Tiller after his adventures with Pong Lou. Tiller (still 20 years old) is living with an older woman named Val and her obese 8-year-old son Victor Jr. Val and Victor Jr. are in the witness protection program after Val squealed on her now dead (but then alive and very crooked) husband to the FBI. Whew. Did you follow all that? Never mind. Reading the book is better than a plot summary anyway.

This is a story about the American dream, about integrating with other cultures, about finding balance and love and goodness in life, about unexpected adventures, about sharing the riches, about the inherent dangers in cheating and dishonesty, and about growing up in a tough world.

While most of the plot is implausible, just run with it. Embrace those little word explosion sentences, and see where they lead.

Bonus: Chapter nine tells the story—through the adult recollections of then-five-year-old Pong Lou—of the beginning of Mao Zedong's Cultural Revolution in 1966. It is a harrowing and unrelenting account that offered me a whole new appreciation for the violence, degradation, and absolute societal upheaval that accompanied this movement.