After a middle-aged, Seattle tech millionaire named Ray Porter visits her store and sends her a dinner invitation, the two begin to date.

[1] Also playing roles in her life are her father, a dysfunctional Vietnam War veteran, and Lisa, her promiscuous, image-obsessed co-worker and voracious rival.

In his review in The New York Times, John Lanchester called it an "elegant, bleak, desolatingly sad first novella" and added, "The prose here is sometimes flat .

The author's tone is at once blasé and gentle and in the novella's 130 pages, he quietly presents us with a cast of characters that it's difficult not to care about.

"[3] In Entertainment Weekly, Margot Mifflin graded the book B with the comment, "Once you adjust to his newfound sincerity, Martin's shift from public follies to private frailties registers as courageous and convincing.