#540
Title: Up in the Air
Author: Walter Kirn
Publisher: Anchor
Year: 2001
302 pages
I have to agree with reviewers who put this on lists with titles like THE MOVIE WAS BETTER THAN THE BOOK. This is simpler than it should have been, with potentially interesting subplots that vaguely and amorphously evaporate. The protagonist is both annoying and pathetic, a bad combination from which Kirn cannot redeem him. Shades of Fight Club (published a few years earlier) lead to an unsatisfying conclusion in which it becomes clear that the narrator has lied to the reader. This causes a deflating "oh" rather than a satisfied "yowee! by damn!" I did read it at one sitting on a cross-continental itinerary, at least, and that ought to count for something.
