A Place Under the Sun

Book excerpt: A Place Under the Sun is a visceral and sardonic novel about misplaced agonies and ambitions. Enrique Ureta, a Nabokovian Spanish young man, has moved to the Middle East to take a place under the sun of a well-paying, tier-1 management consulting firm. Introverted, immature, jumpy, distracted, judgmental - and naturally selfish and egotistic - his professional aspirations are thwarted by the increasing importance of acting out a confident, flashy persona. Impressions, no matter how hurried, carry weight. The firm even uses C.G. Jung's inspired theses to classify its employees by personality types and it's the results-driven extroverts that shall prevail. The job is naturally intertwined with thoughts of wanting out, but its deranged lifestyle offers Enrique (aka Henry) a veil with which to cover troubled relationships and its pay a cushion to brace himself from his baby boomer parents, who are highly in debt and about to look to him for help.Action spans across one week and starts just as it becomes apparent that Henry is going to be finally singled out for his aloofness, and only Bernard's intervention could save him from the pyre. Bernard, though, his powerful mentor and the person he owes having the job to, is having problems of his own: he hasn't returned from a six months sabbatical and is AWOL. Henry then embarks on a thriller-like search for Bernard, which he ironically doesn't seem to kick-off, busy as he is with floundering on his assignment, attending the firm's social events, not picking up on her mother's phone calls, and deciding what course of action to take in order to have young and driven Teresa, a fashion designer grappling in Paris, finally fall for him.