The book’s cover calls Sid a ‘man in progress’ and the cover behind the cover (yes, and that’s something of an innovation for a novel) calls him amiable, easy-going, lovable, beer-lover, idiosyncratic, witty, impulsive, thoughtless, vain, master of denial, idiotic, well-meaning, comical, vice-president, metrosexual, and smart-ass. Even his relationship with his wife in the first...