[Getting It Right is funny] enough, but Gavin's odyssey is just not that interesting. He develops, but there is never any real crisis, no wrestling with alternative destinies. Important issues, such as the impossibility of monogamy and the meaningless tedium of life in the suburbs, are mentioned and then dropped. The poor sod never gets a chance to get things wrong; he just trots along while Howard throws up diversionary incidents to keep things going. (p. 599)

So why keep reading? Because, I suppose, of the Soap Opera Effect, by which even the most trivial characters become interesting when you know enough details about their personal lives (is this why we keep our friends?). Howard makes Gavin an attractive character by effectively describing the mental agonies of the extremely self-conscious: "Another thing about parties, he recalled, was that he nearly always felt too hot at them." Or, "Gavin decided...