Private Citizens

Four college friends have drifted apart and are trying to make lives for themselves in San Francisco and the wider Bay Area in the 2000s. Cory is idealistic, Will spends his time lurking online, Henrik is awkward, and Linda is vicious. Each narrates a share of the book, and each is pulled between wanting to repair the world and wanting to profit from it.

Their paths run through tech startups, protest crowds, gentrifying neighborhoods, karaoke bars, house parties and cultish self-help seminars. As the city pulls them along, they end up back in one another's lives.

The book is a literary comic novel and a satire of privilege, ambition and friendship among young graduates of the aughts. It works as a comedy of manners, with a rude, irreverent streak. The author's sentences are boisterous, and the tone moves quickly between humor and pain.

Reading it means spending time with anxious, self-aware characters who are often unflattering and often funny. The satire is affectionate, and the characters' failures are treated with some tenderness.