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Few John Updike fans would enjoy Self's splintered, swirling narratives. Yet drug-addled psychiatrist Zach Busner, a recurring character in Self's fiction, is startlingly similar to Updike's Rabbit Angstrom in his inability to process new forms of eroticism and spirituality as the stability of a world founded in modernist principles crumbles around him. Here, in the final book of the trilogy begun with Umbrella and Shark, Self probes the absurdity of the information age through two seemingly disparate narratives: the trials and tribulations of a wayward spy engaged in an affair with a tank commander, and the struggle of Zach's family to provide for him as he ages. Set against the backdrop of the Second Gulf War, Self's story lines are folded into a meditation on the meaning of a "double life" in a technology-soaked era. Bewildered by a world of spiritual decay and hyperconnectedness, Zach (like Rabbit) ultimately runs from himself.