Extraordinary Adventures

In Wallace’s strained new novel, 34-year-old Edsel Bronfman leads an ordinary life until the day he receives a phone call inviting him to spend a weekend in Destin, Fla., as the guest of a condo community. There’s only one catch: the invitation is for two, and Bronfman, who leads a circumscribed existence (to say the least) in Birmingham, Ala., doesn’t know any available women. And to make matters worse, he only has 79 days to find one before the offer expires. Improbable as it seems, that one phone call sends Bronfman’s orderly existence spinning off its axis. In short order, he has his apartment broken into, is threatened by the drug dealer who lives next door, joins the YMCA, attends an art exhibit where he is asked by two women to expose himself, goes with his dotty mother to visit the motel room where he was conceived, attends the funeral of a high school friend, and, most important of all, meets Sheila McNabb, who just might be Destin-worthy (if Bronfman doesn’t screw things up). Bronfman is one of those eccentric loners that one meets more often in fiction than in real life. It’s difficult to invest in his adventures because it’s difficult to believe in him. Wallace (Big Fish) is a master of domestic whimsy, but here his exploration of the joys of quotidian life seems disappointingly forced. (May)