I determined to read the rest of the Danzig Trilogy after enjoying The Tin Drum a great deal, and I thought that if I wasn't overwhelmed by that epic, there couldn't be anything to dread in the others, could there? But what I didn't know was that Dog Years is "without doubt one of the most astonishing literary performances since Finnegans Wake". I persevered (and I'm glad I did), but it was a struggle at times and it's probably because of that nagging feeling that I didn't wholly understand what was going on all of the time that I didn't enjoy as much as the first two parts of the trilogy.