A poor book, certainly not on the level of his previous ones.
A group of friends live in the provinces, revolving around a young boy who inhabits a bleak and squalid environment.
The characters and their stories are pushed to the point of absurdity.
The boy's father is a Nazi fanatic, obsessed with brute strength yet fundamentally good-natured and deeply devoted to his son; another friend is an alcoholic, recently separated from his wife, who dies attempting a bank robbery; yet another is mentally disabled and, in a fit of madness, murders a girl before taking his own life.
The underlying theme of the book is the strong bond between father and son: an affection that manages to survive and grow even in a squalid environment and among characters seemingly governed by absurd myths.
Another positive character is a social worker who helps the boy and eventually finds love.
As Francesco Troiano wrote

Ammaniti paints, beyond the plot, the portrait of a country devastated by vulgarity and consumerist flattening: the men have dyed hair and the women designer sunglasses, they vacation at Valtur holiday villages or at the

Coral Bay in Sharm el-Sheikh, buy their mobile phones at "Cellulandia," and shop at the "Quattro camini" shopping center

.
All around, the misery of those who did not make it, depicted nonetheless without indulging in facile sympathy: the ferocity, perhaps not entirely conscious, of the poor explodes—as it already did in

Io non ho paura

—in devastating and unpredictable ways that leave no room for justifications of any kind

.
It is a treacle of episodes, sentiments, and social themes that lapses into the tedious and the predictable.

As God commands