Insignificant Others
A Novel
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4.0 • 1 Rating
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- $12.99
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
What do you do when you discover that your insignificant other is becoming more significant than your spouse?
Richard Rossi works in HR at a Boston-based software company and prides himself on his understanding of the foibles and fictions we all use to get through the day. Too bad he’s not as good at spotting such behavior in himself.
What else could explain his passionate affair with Benjamin, a very unavailable married man? Richard suggests birthday presents for Benjamin's wife and vacation plans for his kids, meets him for "lunch" at a sublet apartment, and would never think about calling him after business hours.
Since Richard is not entirely available himself—there's Conrad, his adorable if maddening partner to contend with—it all seems perfect. But when cosmopolitan Conrad starts spending a suspicious amount of time in Ohio, and economic uncertainty challenges Richard's chances for promotion, he realizes his priorities might be a little skewed.
With a cast of sharply drawn friends, frenemies, colleagues, and personal trainers, Insignificant Others is classic McCauley—a hilarious and ultimately haunting social satire about life in the United States at the bitter end of the boom years, when clinging to significant people and pursuits has never been more important—if only one could figure out what they are.
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Narrator Richard and his partner, Conrad, are a well-adjusted gay couple living in Boston at the end of the American Century in McCauley s adroit latest (after Alternatives to Sex). They have an understanding that allows for the occasional infidelity, but when Richard realizes that Conrad s current fling may be luring him away, he begins to worry. It doesn t help that Richard is becoming infatuated with his own insignificant other, Benjamin, who leads a double life as a supposedly happily married father of two. Richard s problems, though, go well beyond his love life, and with a dry, caustic wit and the occasionally weighty social observation, he describes how he s coping with his own exercise addiction, his suspicious sister, a client at work who may or may not be on the brink of going crazy, a friend who can t bring himself to tell his wife about his health problems, and his deeply confused feelings about Conrad and Benjamin. But it s an unlikely alliance with Conrad s business partner and the slow unraveling of his problems that adds an unexpectedly and refreshingly sentimental dimension to this accomplished comedy.
