The floating opera

Todd Andrews, a Baltimore lawyer, looks back on one July day in 1937, when a floating opera company was booked to perform on a ship in the Chesapeake Bay. Andrews, a man who has come to doubt that anything matters, uses the occasion to examine his own history, his cynical view of the world, and the choices that shaped him. The novel moves between the present of that Fourth of July and the memories it stirs up, mixing sharp wit with serious questions about meaning and purpose. It is written in a playful, self-aware style that often comments on its own storytelling. Readers drawn to philosophical, experimental fiction with a comic edge will find much to enjoy here.