It's hard to imagine a book illuminating the texture of everyday life more brilliantly, or capturing the truth of human emotions more honestly, than Ford does in his account of an alienated scribe in the New Jersey suburbs. Frank Bascombe, Ford's protagonist, clings to his almost villainous despair in a way that Walker Percy's men don't, but the book is heavily influenced by Ford's fellow southerner nonetheless.

I would love to say that I picked this up at the Bookcrossing UK Unconvention because I wanted to read the story of a good-hearted man struggling for equilibrium n the aftermath of divorce and bereavement. I'd love to, but you'd know instantly that I was lying, and that I had in fact picked it up purely because of the title....