Charlie Barnes sixty-eight years old reasonable man small-business owner is facing the abyss
and it's time to reckon with how he has lived his life so far. What happened to all those great
ideas that were snatched from the jaws of success? And what was with all those unsuccessful
marriages? Well who's counting the wives when Barbara his fifth and most permanent wife is
such a rock solid pillar of society?Maybe Jake Barnes son of Charlie and writer of his story
is counting. Now that his father seems to be on the way out Jake begins to wonder what Charlie
Barnes's desperate dreams of success have really added up to. If his father's life was a series
of fantasies then how is it possible for his son to tell the truth about him? And will Jake
have to confront the fact that in their ambitions and their delusions they might not actually
be so very different?Joshua Ferris's new novel is both a profoundly tender and brutally funny
portrayal of a life lost in the American dream.
