Well, it's not very violent, in fact it's quite slow-paced. It's told in a series of flashbacks as the narrator visits a place where he spent a happy time as a young man, and we slowly start getting a vivid picture of all the personalities involved in the story, the narrator's own impressions of them and himself (which may not always be reliable). The slow build allows for a lot of other material to be expressed, things about memory and loss, and also a sort of essay on pity in different contexts. But ultimately it's very disturbing because it seems to be a story about people who are not necessarily bad in themselves but have still made decisions that are morally suspect at best. Eventually it's also about the guilt the narrator himself has to live with, and I can't say anymore without giving away too much!
