Idiopathy: a novel as unexpected as its title, in which Katherine, Daniel, and Nathan—three characters you won’t forget in a hurry—unsuccessfully try to figure out how they feel about one another and how they might best live their lives in a world gone mad. Featuring a mysterious cattle epidemic, a humiliating stint in rehab, an unwanted pregnancy, a mom–turned–media personality (“Mother Courage”), and a workplace with a bio-dome housing a perfectly engineered cornfield, it is at once a scathing satire and a moving meditation on love and loneliness. With unusual verbal finesse and great humor, Sam Byers neatly skewers the tangled relationships and unhinged narcissism of a self-obsessed generation in a remarkable, uproarious first novel.

There are some observations and set pieces in this novel that are funny —

Daniel liked being ill. He regarded it as luxurious, almost decadent. He spent so much of his life being organised and well presented that he had come to regard illness as one of the few times he had permission to let himself go

— insightful —

“Whatever” his father waved his hand. “Your lot. The perpetual adolescents. You go on and on about your parents, about society, about global this and global that and you don’t even understand the most basic fact of life.” He pointed at Nathan. “You don’t understand the world until you have children… you don’t stop being a child until you have one.”

— and spot on about a certain class of people:

“Like many in his circle, Sebastian determinedly equated anything he didn’t like with fascism”

Of course, if you don’t find the above (out of context) quotes smart or clever then Idiopathy is not the book for you. If, however, you chuckled at the first quote, nodded at the second and grinned at the third (immediately picturing someone you know who fits that description perfectly) then you won’t find reading Idiopathy a complete waste of time. Idiopathy is very much a novel of set pieces and pithy one liners. And at his best Byers writing has the taste of Douglas Adams about it. It’s witty and smart and a joy to read.

Unfortunately, the glue that holds the novel together are three very annoying characters who never really grow or change. In one sense that’s the point of the novel. The cattle epidemic stated above results in cows that no longer moo or chew their cud, but just stand there, frozen to the spot. These cows are an obvious metaphor for the apathy and malaise of current society. Our three protagonists typify that malaise, especially Katherine and Daniel who start to grate after awhile. Whether it’s them displaying their neuroses, filled with self doubt and insecurity, or the constant bitching when the two of them are in the room together, there comes a point, about halfway through the book, when you wish something heavy and dense, possibly a cow, would fall and crush both of them.

I said on Amazon that this book would have worked better as a series of observational short stories. But that’s easy for me to say as the armchair critic who hasn’t spent the last few years slaving over my first novel. As a debut I think Sam Byers shows more then enough, in terms of style and wit, that I’m interested in what he does next.