Much of the novel takes place in 1990, and follows Scottish student Prentice McHoan, and his large, and extremely eccentric, family.
It is important not to be hard on Prentice.
For Scottish people of my generation (roughly the same age as Prentice), it occupies a poignant place in space and time.
As British ambassador Christopher Prentice said, in very British way: "It's not just bread and butter, but also jam".
The main narrative force, where Prentice attempts to solve the mystery of his uncle's fate, only really builds up late on in the book.
Charles Prentice, Beckett's editor at Chatto and Windus (or "Shatton and Windup", as Beckett called them in his correspondence), had asked him to bulk out the book with an extra story – the penultimate one had ended with Belacqua's death, the final one, "Draff", with its aftermath among the living – so Beckett obliged with "Echo's Bones".
Prentice, who seems to have been an intelligent and sympathetic man, recoiled from the story, and decided to print the collection as it had originally been conceived.
"The internet doesn't exist," says Steve Prentice of Gartner, a research and consulting firm.
Using Skype to make a voice call, Mr Prentice notes, is routine in America, subject to some restrictions in Canada and can get you arrested in Ethiopia.In his book, "The Internet of Elsewhere", published last year, Cyrus Farivar, a journalist with Ars Technica, a website, chronicles the development of the internet in Estonia, Iran, Senegal and South Korea.
Jim Prentice, the federal minister of Indian affairs and northern development, recognises that but adds: "There is nothing that cannot be accommodated within the Canadian federation".
People, says Mr Prentice, are undergoing a change similar to that which occurred 200 years ago, when Europeans went through a 30cm growth spurt only this time they are expanding not upwards but outwards.
