Unlike the protagonists of McGuane's earlier novels, Frank Copenhaver is already a successful businessman as the novel commences, and its trajectory lies in the story of Frank's disillusionment, overextension and failure, as opposed to the "upward" struggles of McGuane's other heroes.

While Frank diagnoses his own malaise as "a fatal inability to direct himself to the point," his acid-tongued commentary and wild bravado are far from lacking a point, as he serves as the lens for the kind of sharply focused social satire that McGuane readers have come to expect. At the same time, the realities of his life — his middle age, his personae as businessman, father, ex1960s hippie, fisherman and failed husband — give to Copenhaver a richness of wistfulness, regret and rueful contemplation, and a pervading, aching loneliness. At times, his self-regard holds largely a core of irony, as when he notes the absorption...