A recasting of Sorrentino's Aberration of Starlight, this is the story
of how a child becomes a monster: of how Red the boy becomes Red the
Fiend. With an absent father who turns up only to drunkenly berate his
son, and a grandmother whose aggression crescendos to a daily beating,
Red can only escape by turning his hatred outward, by being as cruel and
bitter as his young life has been. Employing direct, elegant sentences,
while retaining his characteristic formal inventiveness, Sorrentino
evokes this unyieldingly grim Brooklyn boyhood, describing close,
familial conflicts that deepen and widen to reflect the hardships of
Depression-era life.