Hah, I forgot that editing a typo in the original post would make this repost to people's flists.

That is the weirdest bug.

Which, again, could be an unreliable narrator . . . but the text does a bad job of signaling that.

Also, even if it's an unreliable narrator, it still doesn't sound fun to read. I have encountered many, many narratives where depiction very obviously ≠ endorsement, but some of them I like spending time inside and some of them I don't.