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Vernon Subutex is a charmer - handsome despite being on the wrong side of 40, easy to get along with, and surprisingly attractive to women. He has also, at the start of "Vernon Subutext 1," spent the past two years unemployed and a virtual shut-in, licking his wounds after the demise of his legendary record store and the deaths of several close friends. The situation quickly changes when his old friend Alex Bleach, a past-it rock star who has been intermittently paying off Vernon's back rent, dies, and Vernon is almost immediately kicked out of his home. This begins a sort of Odyssey through Paris, into the lives and the points of view of the people who interact with Vernon - musicians-turned-middle-managers, retired pornstars, obsessive producers, erstwhile rock journalists, coked-up day traders, violent French nationalists. There is a MacGuffin of sorts - the tapes that Alex left with Vernon, which may reveal long-simmering secrets or jealousies or might just contain him talking about ambient music for hours - but the book isn't as concerned with that as you might think. The real subject of "Vernon Subutext" is Paris, with Vernon our sort of unwitting, louche, misogynist Virgil, who slips in and out of the narrative as the point of view switches between him and the people whose paths he crosses. These points of view - and Vernon's own - are incredible, well-observed and tender even when writing from the point of view of a domestic abuser or a racist screenwriter. I'm looking forward to starting the next volume - after, I think, a little break to read something a bit more calming.