I confess that I'm struggling slightly with this book. I read the first hundred pages or so on a three-hour train journey, but haven't got much fartheI confess that I'm struggling slightly with this book. I read the first hundred pages or so on a three-hour train journey, but haven't got much farther since. The problem is the narrator. Robert Slocum is, quite simply, a complete arse. He is misogynistic and self absorbed and thoroughly negative. I know that part of this is, of course, that Slocum represents the ennui and materialistic rootlessness of the American middle classes, and he is also probably suffering from depression or some other mental problem (caused by whatever the 'something' was that happened), but his constant winging is very wearing to read.
It has to be said, that in the hands of a lesser writer this would be completely unreadable, but Heller does manage to make Slocum interesting, if not entirely sympathetic. He is not a cypher, but a fully developed character, if an unpleasant one. he is adrift in a world of selfish, backstabbing commerce where the only drive is the ego - advancement, money, sex, gratification - but what makes Slocum so unsympathetic is that he embraces this whilst complaining about it (and that only in terms of how hard done by he is) and that he even treats his wife and children as competitors to be beaten....more
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