Synopses & Reviews
"This happened when you were a kid." Thus begins the many fascinating interstitial passages in Hogan's unusually fresh, keenly observed new novel, Man Out of Time--passages that slowly reveal the bones of detrimental patterns now played out in Manhattan in a cutthroat law firm and among cutthroat friends. Abuse, conflict, cowardice, fear, and betrayal: These memories are the lenses--distorted or not--through which the anonymous narrator sees his present. Though armed with a sharp wit, a solid intellect, and a good-enough education, he, like all gifted observers, is an innocent, and lacks (it seems) the right rhythm to succeed. He's landed an enviable position at a topnotch law firm, yet the most effective communicator he encounters in this bastion of complex, driven, omnivorous achievers is the pan-handler who screams incessantly on the street outside his office. He drifts into strange situations, surreal relationships, ramming into all-too-visceral prejudices. At night he retreats into an alcohol-hazed world of disintegrating friendships and out-of-joint encounters. Everything about his reality is slightly askew, even the fact that he's being hung out to dry by a senior colleague nursing a fiendishly puerile grudge. Man Out of Time isn't about growing up; it is about growing, and readers will race through the pages of this haunting, compellingly paced novel to the final revelation: to discover if the hero--antihero?--can make it.
Synopsis
For the nameless hero of Michael Hogan’s riveting, savagely comical novel, everything feels a little off-kilter. On his first day of work at a prestigious Manhattan firm, the bright, young would-be lawyer can’t help feeling that he’s living in the wrong time, at the wrong speed, in the wrong place. With the best of intentions, he’s put on his finest clothes, fought his way through a hangover, and entered a bewildering world of billable hours, office flirtations, and pedigreed posturing.
Even on day one he can’t quite show up on time. And the woman who catches his eye couldn’t be more inappropriate. Now for the wide-eyed young lawyer matched with a button-down firm a contest has begun. Because in one horrible moment, for all the right reasons, our hero makes a wrong move—an ill-timed chuckle that makes a fast enemy of one powerful partner-in-training. And the retribution that follows is quite possibly the most devastating, darkly comic portrayal of the punishment exceeding the crime in modern fiction...