I'm morbidly interested in stories of serial killers, cannibalism, feral children, etc and this had them all. This kid is probably messed up for life, I felt his pull towards old cannibalistic behaviors at the end. It's how he was raised. I have mental illnesses, anxiety and depression, so I really appreciated Alasdair's postscript. Damage doesn't heal, it scars over and if you're very lucky nothing will happen that pulls those scars back to bloodiness. Few of us are lucky.
"To understand a cat you must realize that he has his own gifts, his own viewpoint, even his own morality."
--LILIAN JACKSON BRAUN