The pun in the title is that the reader very literally builds the story as he or she goes through it, piecing together something larger from the booklets.
The catch of the book is that something science-fictionally surreal or fantastic is always going on within the worlds of these dithering, sentimental protagonists.
Dan Clowes is experimenting with ways to not just listen to his characters’ inner monologues, but to look at how they remember and fantasize.
The novel ponders the ways in which we subtly adjust and absorb, internalizing the rhythms of a rearranged world.