Struck by a realization that the public's access to the truth seems obscured, a corporate ethnographer is tasked with writing an era-summarizing report that is challenged by his obsessions and overwhelming quantities of data.

Satin Island has been floating around NUBClub for a while as a possible read, due to Nick's reading of McCarthy and recommending him. It's actually become something of a joke in NUBClub -- 'Satin Island' is now a idiom for a book we keep considering and not voting for. It was something of a small miracle that we even decided to sub-read it. But those who did sub-read it loved it. We found the role of the main character U's observational drift through modern society fascinating. The pattern drawing that U does as he looks through life through an ethnographic lens, offering views of human relations that critique modern society, and the idea of the corporate project to connect dots in contemporary life created a great vehicle for making juxtapositions of modern absurdities and customs. As a roving set of observations, the novel offered what we thought was a beautifully written meditation on society. The images invoked -- the footage of crowds as examples of flow, the setting of delayed flights, the pseudo-epiphany in the final pages on the ferry -- took what could have been a boring essay about cultural interpretations of hidden forces and turned it into a playful and compulsively readable story of a narrator whose insights are either brilliant or delusional as he wanders in a overly academic derive through modern city life. Of course, plot minded NUBClubbers found the book slow in terms of action, and none of us argued that point. But even those who found the novel aimless still couldn't help but enjoy how McCarthy flitted through ideas and connections in a elegant, stylish way. Well done, Satin Island.