Deserts frighten me. I live in a beach town for a reason. My trips to Las Vegas weren't numerous, but are very memorable—for good and ill. Here's a story, then, that's set in a place I do not love or admire, featuring a man in Act Three of his life having failed at his other lives, and failing again.

Paging Updike and Cheever, your territory's being encroached.

And most effectively. Author Unger is working in a long tradition of male-centered stories, prioritizing an idea of success that capitalism likes to valorize and that relegates anything other than work to peripheral significance...only to flip the script and show the hollowness and lack of fulfillment and connection inherent in this cultutally approved rat race.

Critiques are most effective when they come from within. This detailed, almost obsessive, chronicling of one man's descent from the pinnacle he dreamed of reaching into the real-world uses of the talents he never had the luck to exploit to their fullest, is inside the house. The astonishing world of wealth is detailed, excess by excess, without a trace of overt judgment. Like the eternal anticapitalist novel Babbitt, it uses a steady unblinking gaze to do what polemics fail to do: Indict the system that rewards conformist capitulation with material comforts. The problem with this reward system is, and always has been, it is conditional. It can all be taken away from the recipient at any time, either through anonymous "market forces" or malevolent, targeted manipulations of law and economics.

In personalizing the details of one man, in one city, as he rises and falls, Author Unger joins the crew of midcentury modern men in quietly unpicking the system's built-in failures. He uses the main man's wife as a sort of moral Cassandra, constantly questioning—while continuing to enjoy—the fruits of his enviable rise from the ashes of ruined ambition. It's here that I lost a star. Women as Moral Centers, however compromised, irk the snot out of me. Like she condescended to hitch herself to this sad, lost little boy (who's given her a life of comfort) to Guide and Sustain him...gross. She's complicit, she's also culpable for not doing it her damnself. The trope of the little woman who stays home is really the relams of fantasy in this day and time. It's unusual enough that it's now fodder for highly-rated prurient TV shows about the wealthiest capitalists in the hypercapitalist world we exist in.

Why I recommend it to you is simple: Updike, Cheever, Sloan Wilson, and company are dreadfully old-fashioned. Their row still needs hoeing in the world we live in. Author Unger is uniquely placed to tell this generation about its golden calfs. Seen in this light even the repugnant gender politics are a sharp critique of the aspirations that Las Vegas, glittering gambling capital, represents.

Castles built in the air always fall. Gravity, it pays every one of us to foreground in our awareness, is a law that can not be repealed. Flouting it temporarily carries costs that accrue terrible interest surcharges.

Author Unger, without beating you up, reminds you of this.

University of Nevada Press provided an early galley for review.

I've never been to Vegas but have always wanted to go. The cover and description of this novel sounded intriguing.

The Pyramid World hotel setting appears to be meant as a stand-in for the real-life Luxor hotel, with the story line of the construction to mirror that of the actual hotel in the early 90's. Unger, a professor of English at the University of Nevada - Las Vegas, clearly is drawing from a city he knows as he sprinkles in plenty of real Vegas locals - other hotels, restaurants, etc. - into the narrative. The details about all things casinos and gamblers also ring true.

I'm a bit on the fence with this one though. At times, it reads a lot more like a nonfiction historical book rather than a fiction novel. Not being familiar with the author (his last fiction book looks to have been from 1995), I am not sure if this is part of his writing style or just the approach taken for this particular release. The narrative arc spans over several decades for the main characters, thus it lacks the urgency I usually gravitate towards in stories. When we do get an in-depth scene with lots of character dialogue and interaction, I was definitely tuned in though.

Reader mileage might vary here.