Reading progress update: I've read 26%.- well thank you for making me confront that about myself

I've finished part two of the book, set in our hero's childhood. It was intense, vividly described and mostly unpleasant.

Part of the unpleasantness is something I'm generating.

Here's this sensitive, vulnerable eleven-year-old kid that I ought to feel sorry for or at least feel some empathy for. He's puzzled by his enigmatic, secretive, often distant mother. He's afraid of everything. He cries uncontrollably at the slightest provocation and can do nothing to stop himself. He feels abandoned, alone and afraid.

And I don't like him.

I don't like spending time in his head.

His snivelling anxiety fills me with a slow-burning anger.

I want him to either grow up or shut up but I know that he's going to grow up to be a man riddled with anxiety and fear and a sense of being owed something because he was damaged and it wasn't his fault and his life isn't what it should be and he isn't who he should be and none of that is his fault either.

And instead of sympathising or sharing his pain, I just want to tell him to get over himself and take care of what's in front of him.

I don't like this response. I'd like to be nicer than that but I'm not. So thank you, Nathan Hill, for making me confront that about myself.

I really, really hope this is all going somewhere and won't just end with "Ain't life awful?"