I was expecting this book to be far more serious and dark than it was - I was pleasantly surprised at the Trailer Park boys-esque antics, and irony on par with Confederacy of Dunces. The story follows two friends and one of their gfs as they try to "get rich quick" flipping heroine. From a mile away, we can tell that they're never going to turn a profit, and instead just get really strung out – despite telling themselves how they're better than all those other junkies who just get strung out. It won't happen to them!

While I mentioned that it's less dark and serious than expected, it's still both of those things - addiction, amphetamine psychosis, prison, NYC in the 70s - it's not all fun and games, but most of the harrowing scenes have sprinkles of comedic relief in the form of painful irony e.g. the first scene opens with the main character stealing his mother's television set to pawn it for dope money to a Jewish guy who knows it was stolen and by whom, who pays for the TV, and then sells it back to the easily-taken-advantage-of mother who we learn is entrenched in credit lines to this man who is basically friends with her (if friends were loan sharks) and who's charity extends as far as telling her she should call the cops on her son rather than [let him keep exploiting both of them].

Perhaps intentionally, the happy-go-lucky "we're gonna make it" ambitions of all the characters come crumbling down in the last 3 chapters which are just brutal and not very funny at all. I read this as a tonal allusion to the manic "everything's fine" until the wheels fall of mentality of living hit-to-hit.

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