The most remarkable thing about The Thanatos Syndrome is the consummate skill with which Percy weaves so many important ideas into such a readable package.

Although the first-person narrative, along with Tom More's sympathetic character, draws readers in, Percy interrupts his story at various points to interject with case histories, a confessional monologue, a highly impressionistic sequence of short, disjointed paragraphs during More and Lucy's lovemaking, and the concluding rhythmic, emphatic sermon, which reads like a rolling free-verse chant. Percy has set the novel in the very near future and jumps back and forth between past and present, as he did in his novel Love in theRuins.

The book's positive, upbeat ending sits well with the rest of the story, since it follows the structural pattern of classical comedy in its grim and unsettling theme, visible in the title of The Thanatos Syndrome (from the Greek word for...