The narrator of Theroux`s novel, a failed writer, manages a rundown hotel in Hawaii for a flamboyant character named Buddy Hamstra. The hotel--and in fact the entire city--seems to be people entirely by eccentrics, including a lawyer made melancholy by his wealth, a woman obsessed with her gay son, and--perhaps oddest of all--Leon Edel, the biographer of Henry James. A New York Times Notable Book for 2001.