Helen DeWitt

More than a decade after her debut novel, “The Last Samurai,” impressed critics and readers alike, Helen DeWitt has returned with “Lightning Rods,” a funny, filthy volume that starts out innocently enough. Joe is a hapless hero, a failed salesman of encyclopedias and vacuum cleaners, who “had once sold a single Electrolux and eaten 126 pieces of homemade pie in a time frame where most salesmen would hope to reverse the ratio of vacuum cleaners to pie.” He spends his days entertaining himself in his rented trailer; he reads magazines, watches videos, and fantasizes about women and — wait for it — walls. By the third page of the novel, no matter how innocent we thought lonely, sad-sack Joe to be, we are swiftly and utterly disabused.