Rating: WARTY!
Read in a mediocre fashion by Adam Grupper, this audio book failed to launch and I DNF'd it in short order. The blurb advises us that "Paul Trilby is having a bad day," but it's nowhere near as bad a day as it is for those who have to read of his tediously pedantic non-adventures. Paul is in a downward spiral. Dismissed from academia for reasons which were unclear from the portion to which I could stand to listen, he eventually winds up in a temp job as a typist. His perky and ambitious news anchor wife has left him, as have three girlfriends, and how he's stuck in the general services division of the Texas Department of General Services, where he's informed that there are things living in the false ceiling. I never did find out what these were, because I lost interest in the endless rambling prologue which is the first half of the novel. I suspect that what lives in the ceiling is the people who have been 'let go' from their jobs during a humongous lay-off at some point prior to Paul's arrival, but I really don't care.
The writing is awful. Every little thing he does isn't magic, but it is detailed monotonously, and there's no humor to leaven it. I certainly have no intention of allowing an author to keep on hitting me over the head with it every other paragraph. If this is supposed to exemplify his life, I got it in the first few sentences which are very reminiscent of the opening scene from Mike Judge's movie Office Space. I'd recommend seeing that instead. I cannot recommend this. It's infinitely boring.
