Gary Indiana’s newest autopsy of America’s walking dead examines the tragicomic fate of la vie boheme when its cherished delusions and brightest hopes succumb to the harsh realities of the aging process. Do Everything in the Dark continues Indiana’s exploration of social anomie and disconnection with the scabrous wit the author is famous for. But it is also a chilling chronicle of madness and failure, disappointments and ruined ambitions, disastrous life choices and the many ways love dies in a world people find increasingly impossible to live in.

The novel follows several couples and solitary wanderers through the summer of 2001, as their internationally scattered vacations throw long-festering, glossed-over incompatibilities and resentments into exotic and unbearable relief. Indiana shows his large and terrifyingly credible cast of America’s cultural elite exhibiting their worst behavior, while sympathizing with their underlying fears and frailties and thwarted good intentions.

Do Everything in the Dark is Indiana’s darkest and funniest novel, but also his deepest exploration of our least manageable, most uncomfortable emotions.