Tom Rath, the novel’s central figure, is not a dramatic outsider. That is what makes him so unsettling. He is married, employed, educated and socially presentable. From the outside, he looks like a man moving towards stability. He has a wife, children, a house and the possibility of a better job. In another kind of novel, this would be the architecture of success. In Wilson’s hands, it becomes a trap built from silence.
