So it turns out there are five novels about Bukowski‘s alter-ego protagonist and I had already read Post Office albeit out of order. So I decided to start from the beginning with this one. It‘s all about Henry‘s childhood and teen years growing up with an antagonistic father and as an outcast lower class kid trying to survive the school yard in a rich, upper class school. It‘s just as raunchy, irreverent, funny and blunt as you‘d expect.