Chronic City

Chase Insteadman is a former child star whose current fame stems from
tragedy: his fiancee Janice is trapped indefinitely on the International
Space Station by a layer of low-orbit mines. They are both adrift, she
in the stratosphere, he in a vague routine punctured both adrift, she in
the stratosphere, he in a vague routine punctured by Upper Eastside
dinner parties. Into Chase's world enters Perkus Tooth, a pop critic
whose countercultural savvy and voracious paranoia draw Chase into
another Manhattan, where questions of what is real, what is fake, and
who is complicit take on a life-shaterring urgency.

• author: Jonathan Lethem