Children''s author and illustrator Thompson''s memoir is beautifully designed and illustrated. His style is distinct, bitter, angry, and funny. By the author''s own admission the title is deliberately disorganized-he puts down episodes from his life as they come to him. A lot of the focus is on Thompson''s various stays in mental institutions, for reasons he never makes entirely clear, and on his struggles with his distant mother. Promotional materials concentrate on Thompson''s Asperger''s syndrome, and except for a multipage spread in the middle of the book, the work hardly touches on this aspect of his life. Thompson, in fact, never actually indicates when, or if, he was diagnosed with Asperger''s. All in all the book is a bit of a mess, and often a depressing one at that. VERDICT The haphazard nature of this memoir charms for the first 60 pages or so, and then the content begins to grate. A more standard organization of events would have been welcome.