At first, it sounds like the kind of story I wouldn’t enjoy, about a man serving life for having killed his girlfriend. Ms. Page does a very good job of introducing Simon in a way that we do get his sympathy, before we dig deeper into his psyche, and that’s a big help.
Once we started looking more closely at him, though, and examining the motivations for his past and current actions, we see a man who suffers from the same insecurities we do (although most of us contain our reactions better than he), and who’s forced to undergo some rather unusual “treatment” techniques, bringing up concerns over individual’s rights, criminal psychology, and personal identity.