I found this a disappointment. It sounded so good but the MC just left me cold. As an exemplar of spiritually null Twentieth Century Man he was somewhat interesting, but an essay would have done for that. I also did not think the mix of real and made-up characters worked. Rather than giving the inverted characters verisimilitude, it seemed to drain all the life from the real ones, so they were all equally contrived and shallow.

Also not a fan of the disgusting sex scenes, which I started to skip halfway through (wish I’d done so earlier).  Again, perhaps this is how 20th Century Man rolls, but I do not really want to read about it in detail. 

Don’t think I’ll be trying another by Boyd.