Nicholson Baker's latest novel is one of his least successful. The subject matter is highly controversial (the novel is about a guy telling his friend about his plan to assassinate President Bush), and it seems that controversy may be the whole point of the undertaking. The novel consists entirely of dialogue between Jay and Ben, wherein Jay explains his plans (involving remote control flying saws and "homing" bullets), and Ben tries to talk him out of it. During the course of the conversation, Baker points out some of the evils committed by Bush and his administration, but there isn't any kind of coherent political diatribe here — it's assumed that the reader already knows the details.

Baker's great strength as a writer is his ability to focus his descriptive powers on the daily minutia that normal people never notice, but he does very little of that in this slim volume. He's not very good at writing believable dialogue, and this effort isn't as good as what he achieved in Vox. I'm all for controversy, and I'd sure like to see Bush out of the White House, but I expected a lot more from the author of one of my all-time favorite books (The Mezzanine). Bottom line: Baker is a good writer, but this may be his least successful novel to date.