Algren does successfully portray the "down and out," seedy side of a city's underbelly of drug addiction, gambling, tenement living and petty crime. I found myself silently cheering that Frankie would shake the monkey off his back (Algren originated the saying, supposedly), all the while knowing the cheers were futile wastes of breath. Algren also superbly crafts each character in such a way that you can practically feel them struggling.

But ultimately, I didn't find the book compelling. It just didn't do it for me. The writing is highly stylized and the transitions were sometimes difficult for me to follow. For example, in one paragraph we're following Frankie into his a men-only hotel, and the next we're apparently inside Sophie's mind as she loses it. This may be one of those novels that has to be read in the right time and space, and I just wasn't in it, as it's been compared to Welsh's Trainspotting (or vice versa), which I loved.