This book comes heavily blurbed, including one by a psychiatrist, and the blurbs all say essentially the same thing: “In and Out of Madness” is powerful, raw, brutal and honest. I guess it is all those things. It was not for me, however, a satisfying piece of fiction.

Joe Taylor, Professor of English at the University of West Alabama, is the author of a novel, “Oldcat and Ms. Puss: A Book of Days for You and Me,” and two volumes of stories, “The World’s Thinnest Fat Man” and “Some Heroes, Some Heroines, Some Others.”

As the Alabama football team moves to the end of a so-far undefeated season and hopes are very high for a national championship, this seems like a perfectly reasonable time to take a look at “Twelve and Counting.”