The best description of this hefty book I've seen was by A.O. Scott: "the longest novel about tennis ever published. It is also a dystopian political satire set on a North American continent menaced by paraplegic Quebecois terrorists and splintered into new territorial arrangements, the most wildly metaphorical anatomy of drug abuse since William Burroughs's Naked Lunch, and a tender, heartfelt, coming-of-age story." Some seem to hate the (once?) trendy Wallace, but I can't get enough of his writing and these wonderful interweaving stories have plenty of it. He creates a subtly different and believable almost-future, 10% of which is obsessive footnotes, and all of which is packed with ideas.