I had the pleasure of reviewing Tom McCarthy’s new novel, Satin Island, for the Los Angeles Times. I had a lot to say about this book and had to cut the review back. I think McCarthy says some interesting things about the direction we’re headed and it’s not pretty. 

McCarthy’s style is at times reminiscent of David Foster Wallace’s stories of characters caught in the gears of consumer capitalism coupled with the whimsy of Jean Philippe Toussaint’s literary situational comedies in which every detail is microanalyzed. “Satin Island” also owes something to the dot-com-era work novel; an air of catastrophic contemporaneousness hangs over the proceedings as U. is sustained by and trapped in a system he knows cannot possibly last. “The Company’s logo was a giant crumbling tower. It was Babel, of course, the old Biblical parable.”

Read the rest of the review. You might also enjoy this interview at Vulture.