What does it mean to be a good man, and is that something you can predict? This is the question that Smythe asks through this… I don’t know what you call it. Anti-allegory?
To read this is to get caught up in a story that fits comfortably inside a litfic longlist: there’s a man, with a loving wife and children, not without problems. He’s a normal man, a Senator, a good man.
Something starts to change. The tone becomes darker. This is subversive genre fiction working its way into your heard and mind and a damn fine pile of words.