Any novel can sound boring when reduced to its most basic summary. Anna Karenina: A woman has an affair and struggles in her marriage. Of Mice and Men: Two itinerant agricultural workers plot to buy a farm where they can raise rabbits. So to describe Joshua Ferris’s new novel as the story of an atheist dentist who’s obsessed with religion, baseball, and his online identity isn’t very helpful. Instead, recall the last time you were at a wedding reception and ended up cornered by someone’s tiresome relative—perhaps, God forbid, your own. Now imagine that this person is thrusting upon you his 400-page treatise.

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