Book excerpt: A comedy of compromise thaT “brims with wit, passion and soul” from the international bestselling author of Beautiful Music (The Millions, A Most Anticipated 2020 Book). Joe Keen and Ana Urbanek have been a couple for a long time, with all the requisite lulls and temptations, yet they remain unmarried and without children, contrary to their Midwestern values (and parents’ wishes). Now on the cusp of forty, they are both working at jobs that they’re not even sure they believe in anymore, but with significantly varying returns. Ana is successful, Joe is floundering—both in limbo, caught somewhere between mainstream and alternative culture, sincerity and irony, achievement and arrested development. Set against the backdrop of bottomed-out 2009 Detroit, a once-great American city now in transition, part decaying and part striving to be reborn, The Narcissism of Small Differences is the story of an aging creative class, doomed to ask the questions: Is it possible to outgrow irony? Does not having children make you one? Is there even such a thing as selling out anymore? “While everyone is trying so hard to act normal, The Narcissism of Small Differences revels in its own weirdness.” —Ben Folds, New York Times bestselling author/singer-songwriter “In a literary landscape where most are hell-bent on outplotting their peers, Michael Zadoorian has sculpted a thriller from everyday life.” —Josh Malermann, author of Bird Box “The Narcissism of Small Differences is one of [Zadoorian’s] best. He has become an essential chronicler of the life in Detroit at the beginning of our century.” —Stateside, Michigan Public Radio