Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I am dumbfounded by praise such as "you will not read a more important book this year" - this is almost a dreadful book! Very poorly written (author made Yale Law Journal!!!! - HOW????? - the writing is confusing, repetitive & incredibly prosaic) as well as very poorly described as a memoir of Appalachia. Appalachia is a minor character in this narrative - a reader gets almost nothing about hillbilly/Appalachian life in general, & as far as being a depiction of a "culture in crisis" there is nothing described that is not descriptive of our American culture in general (poor people abuse the system, poor people have unstable families, poor people undervalue education, poor people drink & do drugs). This book would be much more aptly described as "fairly ordinary boy from poor white family makes good." I feel very cheated as a reader - I was really hoping for an expansive discussion of a subgroup of America's poor & instead got a simple, largely mundane autobiography of a boy whose mother was an oft-married druggie & whose colorful (coarse, cursing, but nurturing) grandmother stepped up to rear him.