
After college, Milo quickly traded in his aspirations in the art world for a rat-race life of quiet desperation and loud disappointment. His opposite is his estranged college buddy, Purdy, who's now a wealthy, enviable man whose stock has only risen since graduation. The memory of Purdy seems to figure in whenever Milo takes stock of his own failure. But Purdy does have one spot on his record: A son he didn't know he had and now wants to hide. The son turns out to be twice as bitter and resentful as Milo, and for better reason.
To those of us quick to blame others, the narrative encourages turning that critical eye inward, and taking a break from the self-hating and social criticism long enough to appreciate what we do have, which is often more than first imagined. If the novel has a point, that may be it. The Ask reads quickly but has a lot of flaws: Barely tolerable characters, a drawn-out plot structure, some unclear resolution points, and the author frequently employs one affected choice of syntax that bothered the hell out of me.