We watch thoroughly likable, fumbling Larry Weller grow and work through his difficulties and even his maddeningly ordinary mid-life crisis at 40. We watch as Larry passively learns "about the world, exactly as everyone else does— from sideways comments over a lemon meringue pie, sudden bursts of comprehension or weird parallels that come curling out of the radio, out of a movie, off the pages of a newspaper, out of a joke—and his baffled self stands back and says: so this is how it works." Shields clearly has a great deal of empathy for her characters as well as an ability to create characters so convincing that they could very well be living down the street somewhere. Larry represents every person, and as he makes his way through life, "his brain is always, busy, and he wonders if other people live their lives in the same...