Amidon, Stephen. Human capital. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2004. ISBN 0-312-42424-8.

Summary: Three suburban families, respectively belonging to the upper, upper middle, and lower classes, interact in typically sterile and compromised ways. The high-school-age children have intelligible interests and motivations, although they act foolishly. Their parents are concerned almost entirely with money, status, and dominance relationships.

The father in the rich family manages a hedge fund that is based on his goofball economic theory that markets are always ultimately rational. Following an extended bout of market irrationality, the fund is about to collapse, but he manages to conceal this from almost everyone. He does have to tell his investors that the fund won't pay the promised dividend, however.

This puts the upper-middle father in a difficult situation, since he has borrowed heavily to take much too large a “position” in this hedge fund, basically because he wanted to show off and hoped to make a lot of money for nothing. He's on the verge of losing his house and business, but he too manages to conceal this from almost everyone.

The teenage son in the rich family is a binge drinker, but manages to conceal this fact, mostly, from his father. Having gotten disgracefully drunk at a party one evening, he calls the daughter in the upper-middle family -- his ex-girlfriend -- and asks her to drive him home. She does, but, when she picks him up, she brings along her new boyfriend, the son in the lower-middle family, a moody, talented graphic artist who has dropped out. He drives the rich kid's car back to the rich family's house. Along the way, he collides with and injures a bicyclist. He and the upper-middle girl manage to conceal their involvement in the hit-and-run from almost everyone -- which, unfortunately, makes it look like the rich kid was driving when the accident occurred.

The preceding summary of the mainsprings of the plot leaves out some of the main characters (the mothers in the rich and upper-middle families and the lower-middle boy's uncle, who is his guardian). They, too, are secretive, foolish, and unpleasant.

The families' various secrets unwind and tangle in ways that make them, justifiably, fearful, miserable, and desperate. Their problems are exacerbated by their almost complete failure to communicate, which leads them to imagine that their situations are even worse than they really are.

Though this novel is advertised as a satire, the tone is realistic and subdued, and no moral lessons are drawn. I admired the author's skill as a writer and as a constructor of plots, but I strongly disliked having to live in his characters' minds and hearts.