The novel is best when excavating inner lives, and the most satisfying scenes deal with characters' seething discontent with life.
For a government led by a former general, Abdel Fatah al-Sisi, who took power in what was essentially a military coup and faces seething discontent at home, the temptations of engaging in an external conflict are obvious.
When the seething discontent in Britain's inner cities exploded into widespread rioting in the early 1980s, discrimination in housing was identified as one of the key causes.
His friend, the legendary Robert Crumb, rendered Pekar's stories through a grubby crosshatch of black lines that exaggerated only slightly the author's seething discontent with the world.
For now, at least, the court's ruling set the stage for a fierce campaign, returning to the ballot a number of prominent politicians seeking to tap into the seething discontent with Mr. Maliki's government, and not only among Sunnis.
While Sinn Féin may exploit the seething discontent with the political establishment and the Irish banking system, the chronic state of the Republic's finances highlights a gaping and growing faultline on this island.
Oman, he said, seemed comparatively free of the seething discontent that marks much of the region: "The fact that Sultan Qaboos has been in power 40 years, and is still universally admired and loved, is astonishing," he told me.
In focusing on the seething discontent of comfortable professionals with plenty of reasons to be contented, Ms. Coxon, who writes for film as well as for the stage, has chosen a subject of no arresting originality.
