My name is Danny Bayle, I’m twenty-eight years old, and it’s been four years since I completed my last novel—a novel that earned a unanimous reception from critics in that none of them bothered to read it. Too slim to use as a paperweight, too fat to serve as a fan in hot weather, my book could be considered a domestic success, but only for the reason that my mother kind of liked it.

When people used to ask me what my novel was about, I’d get frustrated, not with them, but with myself. I didn’t have a good elevator-ride synopsis on the ready, a one-minute description to snag their interest. It’s about a boy, I would say, or a man, or a boy-man. It’s about work, love, friendship, family, an empty apartment, an annoying neighbour and a teenage runaway. The novel was a personal story and smattered with my own experiences, though still unrecognizable to anyone who knew me then. I wasn’t the main character with a different name, or his witty best friend, and I didn’t try to conceal myself as someone wise in the periphery.