Lesser ruins

A community college professor flounders while attempting to write a book on Montaigne in Haber's sharp if occasionally strained comic novel (after Saint Sebastian's Abyss). The unnamed narrator has spent years working on the project with little to show except for tangential research on such subjects as Balzac's supposed death by coffee. In the interim, he's lost his wife to dementia, a beloved colleague has died by suicide, and he's scarcely looked up from his work. For the narrator, everything is a distraction to be removed, including family members and friends. Haber derives comedy from repetition, such as the narrator's obsession with coffee, often his subject and the fuel for it ("I decide to make coffee in order to not write about coffee and not think about coffee, assuming I'd written so much about coffee only yesterday from a desire to have coffee"). He also plants goofy digs at the pretensions of academia, such as naming other scholars after hockey player Etienne Desjardins and Ping Pong champ István Boros. Haber borrows stylistically from Thomas Bernhard, and though the material doesn't have quite the same edge (the narrator's comparatively low-bore complaints target smartphones and his son's electronic music), the narrator's breathless voice is generally invigorating. Patient readers will enjoy this digressive project. Agent: Danielle Bukowski, Sterling Lord Literistic. (Oct.)