I loathe this book...

I hope I dont give anything away, I'll try not to. The characters although well flawed and disgusting human beings (which I enjoy in most fiction) are shallow but worse repetitious. The characters, especially Paul and Elaine feel too hollow, stereotypes and cliches I have seen before. I think the most important aspects of suburban life were left unexplored. Everything was easy to put together, so much so that I read on briskly to see if the characters would become more derranged, more pathetic than they were. I'll stop there. The most interesting characters, the children of the story, Sammy, Daniel, Nate, Willy, Jennifer and the 'Montgomery' kids were barely developed, used more as inanimate antagonists than real characters. I never felt overly depressed or empathetic with the books characters, Paul and Elaine annoyed me to no end, when characters like Pat and the old man offered a much more interesting story line that is briefly mentioned and then bypassed. Pats story would have been a great novel or at least novella in itself, but all we get is a brief physical and emotional release that goes unfulfilled. And what about Pats husband? He was interesting as well, he married Pat (which may seem irrelevant if you are early in the book) and had an odd relationship with the old man. I may have enjoyed this book better if I hadn't seen Alan Ball's American Beauty first. His characters were flawed in a far more empathetic manner than those in Music for Torching. I may be comepletely wrong of course, I have no point of reference, I am unmarried, unstuck and find no solace in suburbia's landscape.