Sleepwalker

This awkward debut by young Dubliner Toomey creates little interest in the life of a young man whose drinking and promiscuity have dulled him to life's greater purpose. Portentously framed by a first-person narrator who claims to have received the maudlin tale firsthand, the story follows handsome, privileged, but rudderless Stuart Byrne, who wakes up one day with a girl he doesn't recall having met. The rough contours of Stuart's life don't elicit much sympathy: the son of a successful yet emotionally remote solicitor, Stuart is expected to be "hard striving," but continues to come up short. Hangovers keep him from reaching work on time; he's ambivalent about his friendship with Rachel, a "trophy beauty"; and he gets a college acquaintance pregnant, or so the girl claims. He spills his sad-sack details over pints to any takers (bar mates, his brother, his dad), but can't accept the idea of holding down a job he hates or raising a wee one with a woman he doesn't love. Hardly Dickensian, acknowledges the narrator, who struggles to fashion a rewarding tale out of Stuart's "immense and ostrichlike stupidity," leaving the reader feeling just as cold as Stuart. (Oct.)