From Holden Caulfield to Moses Herzog, our best literature has been
narrated by malcontents. To this lineage add Peter Jernigan, who views
the world with ferocious intelligence, grim rapture, and a chainsaw wit
that he turns, with disastrous consequences, on his wife, his teenaged
son, his dangerously vulnerable mistress--and, not least of all, on
himself. This novel is a bravura performance: a funny, scary,
mesmerizing study of a man walking off the edge with his eyes wide
open--wisecracking all the way.