Satin Island

At some point close to the end of the book, the hapless protagonist of Satin Island finds himself the centre of attention at an industry conference where he's not a speaker. The audience and the speakers alike fist-bump him and pat him on the back and congratulate him on a job well done, despite the preceding 170-odd pages of him doing and saying nothing of any substance - just musing about his childhood, having illusions of greatness, obsessing over random news stories and imagining himself smarter than everybody else. Such is the life of a straight white dude with a corporate job. That is all.


An extra star for the quality of the prose, and another for how disturbingly easy it was for me to relate to the protagonist (I don't expect anyone else to share this affinity).