
In the second of two American shortlisters for this year’s Booker Prize, Paul O’Rourke is a dentist, atheist, and Red Sox fan. His atheism is, however, constantly overpowered by his desire to belong to some kind of community, and he habitually dates women from large religious families (WHICH religion doesn’t particularly matter) into which he attempts to insert himself. Then, one day, a patient drops hints about a displaced race of people from Biblical times, the Ulm (Ulms? Ulmites? I don’t quite know). Shortly thereafter, someone begins impersonating Paul in various online locations, posting streams of jargon and obscure ancient texts about the Ulm…ians.
I don’t know. It’s a worthy and topical subject, but I felt like this was a novel gasping for a plot. The same conversations and themes and inner monologues get rehashed over and over, and the identity theft bit, while providing a point of mystery early in the novel, ultimately amounts to not much. I don’t think my coldness towards this novel arises solely from the lack of sympathy I have for affluent white males in search of a world that accepts them, though that could be part of it. The good news is that the protagonist/narrator is not without a sense of irony, which at least makes it readable. The weakest of the shortlisters so far (two to go).