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The dialogue ( taken word for word from the book ) and the acting ( which is great ) makes the characters funny, sad and a little lovable and in Jack's case strangely heroic .

There are inevitably jokes about who’ll be next, how Ray and Lenny would appreciate it if Vic didn’t go before them. There's 4 main characters ( 5 if U include Jack ) but U have to remember the names of their wives and kids as well. This is the opening of his first short chapter in the cathedral, but the next, Vince’s, is a flashback to the scene inside the chapel of rest at Vic’s funeral parlour.

Neither the tragic nor the comic view of life will ever be complete and correct, but perhaps the mixture of the two can be. Ray remembers helping Vince to start his auto business; he regrets selling his scrap yard to Vince so cheaply.

And we come to understand why Jack made those confusing jokes in Vince’s hearing about hop-picking and how babies are made. Lenny, echoing those playground taunts, keeps repeating that Vince has no right, that he’s no closer to Jack than any of them. I did have one quibble with the text, which will take some time to describe but shouldn’t be given too much emphasis despite that. A lot of silliness, meaning either none of the esteemed panel had read the Faulkner or they had and didn’t notice the similarities.Without revealing too much, the character of June is the real heart of the novel, even if she is given a relatively small amount of page-time. He’s permanently disconnected, making up for it with spiv-like swagger—Swift dares us not to take seriously this incarnation of the stereotypical used-car salesman, complete with camel-hair coat—and his suggestive remarks to any young woman he meets. Seemingly a storm in a teacup, it was explained (eventually) by Swift as an “homage” to Faulkner, but not before several judging panel members had been worked up into a huff by the press, with one describing the revelations as “embarrassing” for the judges.