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Kosinski is an excellent writer: spare, concise, intense. This book troubled me; vignettes are populated with a character (characters? …never named) alienated and often lost. There is frank conversation as the narrator moves in stark, sexual situations that sometimes shock and always disconcert. The novel is challenging & uncompromising & daring. I needed walks to ponder what I‘ve read, ideas of isolation & desperate need for connection. Striking.

Hot streak continues on my reading list with the winner of the 1968 National Book Award, the little known novel STEPS by Jerzy Kosinski. I can say, categorically, this would have been 2008 Ross's favorite book. Incredibly violent and disturbing vignettes of unknown men and women escaping themselves through sex and desire.