This wryly comic tale follows the lives of a stunted antihero and his long-suffering girlfriend

The title character of American author Kate Greathead’s second novel is not just a man; he’s an archetype, a quintessence, a lament in human form. Though decent at heart, George is self-absorbed, inattentive, forgetful, clumsy, indecisive and workshy. A philosophy graduate with vague literary ambitions that never quite come to fruition, he gets by on his good looks and family connections. By contrast, his longsuffering girlfriend, Jenny, is competent and conscientious. The story of their interminable, codependent relationship is told in a wry, third-person narrative foregrounding her plight: George’s laziness “felt like a specific kind of male arrogance … in the beginning, before she knew what to make of it, she had found it charming”; “His absentminded disregard for others, his resistance to doing anything that posed the slightest inconvenience to him. It was immature, it was selfish. It was not a good way to be!”

Set in the US during the first two decades of the 21st century, the novel follows George from his adolescence to his 30s, as he lurches from one mildly amusing calamity to the next. After being briefly hospitalised after a panic attack, he is so affronted by the resulting medical bill that he punches a wall in anger, breaking his wrist and necessitating a further hospitalisation. When he earns an unexpected windfall by starring in a TV commercial, he contrives to squander the money on ill-advised cryptocurrency investments. Out on the town, he can’t find his wallet and is sure it’s been swiped, only to later realise he’d left it on his bed at home.