Good book with an obnoxious narrator

Me and Earl and the Dying Girl, which has very little, really, to do with a dying girl (she’s a catalyst, and an audience, but that’s about it) has one of the most obnoxious narrators I’ve ever read. He’s so self-deprecating and whiny that I wanted to strangle him. I actually really enjoyed the book, but the fact that he kept cutting in with “If after reading this book you come to my home and brutally murder me, I do not blame you” — this made me want to drop it in the bathtub. However, it’s a borrowed book (thanks Cait!) and I really did want to finish it, so I restrained myself.

“There was just something about her dying that I had understood but not reallyunderstood, if you know what I mean. I mean, you can know someone is dying on an intellectual level, but emotionally it hasn’t really hit you, and then when it does, that’s when you feel like shit.”

So our narrator, Greg, spends the set up of the book explaining how he does his best to get along with his whole school, but never really befriend anyone, for fear of becoming a target. Other than his friend (who he says is more of a coworker) named Earl, who helps him make strange movies based on already strange movies that they’ve watched together. Earl is…you know the kid from Role Models, the one that Stifler is in charge of who talks about titties the whole time, then turns out to have a heart in the end? I could not quit picturing that kid as Earl. Rachel, our dying girl, was a kind of friend to Greg when they were kids. When his mom finds out that Rachel has been diagnosed with leukemia, she forces Greg to spend more time with her. She eventually finds out about the movies, and then things change for Greg.

Here’s the thing — this book was genuinely funny, and had a great story. Greg’s descriptions of his crazy father and his evil cat and his classmates had me laughing out loud. He just needed to shut up about himself.