An amusing, entertaining book about one man's experience of failed middle class life, featuring a lot of weeping and epiphany on the part of the main character, and plenty of plot twists to keep it interesting. A nice summer or long train ride read (do you not ride trains where you live? You have my sympathy). The failure of the middle class life here is really about the failure of the U.S. economic system to maintain enough jobs to allow the dwindling American middle class to prosper, which it fails to notice when things seem good; the author gets in some licks on that account--a thoroughly enjoyable smack down of a few individuals symbolizing the group think, self-satisfaction, and collective delusion that started in the eighties, built up critical mass in the nineties, and after 2007 brought down the cloudburst of shit rain.