THE PALE KING

This posthumous work from the acclaimed author David Foster Wallace was put together from notes and computer files Wallace had been working on for a decade. It’s not really a novel but a collection of stories; snippets; profiles; deliberately dull tax codes; and overly detailed stories about nose-picking, “squeezing shoes,” mind games, and the confusion of being alive. Having to deliver some sentences containing more than 250 words and multiple clauses upon clauses, narrator Robert Petkoff is challenged to keep the work alive. The main story, ostensibly about the soul-crushing job of an IRS accountant, is beautifully told but gets lost among the many unrelated pieces in this lengthy book. M.S. © AudioFile 2011, Portland, Maine [Published: JUNE 2011]