This picaresque novel owes much to Cervantes, Fielding, and Bellow, with a certain nod to Dostoevsky and Franzen. We meet the main character as a young successful adult and follow him into friendships and situations that are amusing, crushing, and even criminal. We follow his hilarious and fateful paths through multiple French trips, including a pig hunt in Perigord. Paris, Nice, Monaco, and Val d'Isere are richly explored. In Mexican trips, he is...