Read it. It's pretty good. The language is a little pretentious in places, but it shouldn't put you off. Mind you, I read it years ago, when it first came out, so I may have been a tad uncritical. It's a good bit of Southern Gothic-style lit, so if you like Flannery O'Connor and her ilk you should get on with it pretty well. If anything you're more likely to be put off Cave by the last album - dull! I went to see him last year and it was pretty dreary stuff, full of po-faced 20-somethings taking it all far too seriously. Not what the Birthday Party and Bad Seeds used to be about at all.