Set in late 1980s London and featuring as its protagonist a prototypical modern man, City of the Mind explores many contemporary social concerns and dilemmas. Having recently gone through a painful divorce, forty-yearold Matthew Halland is beset with feelings of dislocation and confusion and spends much time pondering what went wrong in his marriage and how a once passionate love can mysteriously dissolve. His distress is sharpened by the fact that his wife now has custody of their eight-year-old daughter, and Lively poignantly renders the all too common situation of the divorced father forced to feed his paternal emotional cravings on the thin meal of biweekly visitations.

Matthew's daily life is characterized by the rush and frenzy typical of modern urban existence. As an architect, he is forever driving about the city visiting sites and clients, getting caught in traffic jams, anxiously checking his watch. He...