Review: Outside Looking In

Outside Looking In by T. Coraghessan Boyle
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The story begins with a married PhD student in psychology wanting to get in with the in crowd at school, who happen to be investigating mushrooms and LSD. We follow this couple as they descend into the crowd, becoming the prototypical commune types by the end. Throughout it all, our hero remains the conservative, the last to break the rules, the last to maintain a job. But in the end, there's not much left of the 50s mentality the book started with. Boyle shows the gradual movement into sustained drug usage as an unglamorous descent. Not a fun read, and not as interesting as other Boyle books I've read. And not a satisfying ending. But I like the way Boyle tells a story and will likely read more.

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