There are lots of interesting scenes, each with the potential to be quite eery and sinister but they all ultimately fail to deliver on that promise, and worse - they are all entirely unlinked to each other so each chapter doesn't feel like it builds on the last. Late in the book we are told all about a drinking buddy of the main character, then this narrative is abandoned and appears completely irrelevant to the remainder of the story or anything that went before. Characters pop up for a while and say a lot but have no real bearing on story then disappear entirely. But the implementation is dry and not very funny and the plotting is all over the place. The concept (of someone being embroiled in a trial they don't understand for a crime they can't even be told about) is a good one, with the potential for lots of dark humour and parodying of sclerotic bureaucracies. I'm not sure why this book has the status that it does. At a loss as to why this is considered a classic
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