A brilliant book that captures the harsh realities and nuances of what it means to be an American in 2018 told through the compelling lives of characters who will both enrage you and hold up a mirror of our own flawed, vulnerable seeking selves.

 

Barry is the hedge fund anti-hero of the novel who has achieved it all, a degree from Princeton, despite his troubled upbringing, a multi-million dollar New York lifestyle, a beautiful wife, and, much to his dismay, a three-year-old son with severe autism.

The story opens with a desperate Barry running away from his life, tossing his phone and credit cards away and hopping on a bus to seek out the woman from his college days whom he now feels he should have never let get away. With references to Kerouac’s On the Road, Barry’s long bus odyssey reveals a vision of a modern America saturated by a Trump presidency, a personal reckoning, and an attempt to define what  it means to live out the American Dream–that ever elusive and morphing promise.