The Thousand Deaths of Ardor Benn

Ardor Benn is supposed to be charismatic and brilliant - everybody in the book, and the narration, talk him up as being both. But in practice he's just manipulative, inconsiderate, and comes up with schemes that are dull and badly thought out. That really sank the book, since I found that I didn't want to spend time with the protagonist and he wasn't doing anything that interesting anyway.