"Helen of Nowhere" by Makenna Goodman

I saw this book on the Booker Prize longlist for this year. Usually I'm not that interested in reading the list (I'm more invested in the International Booker), but I enjoy following along with some reviewers. What got me curious about this title were its negative reviews. I haven't seen a single positive one in my feeds. Yet I couldn't get a grasp on why it appeared to be so disliked. Ironically there was a lot of vague critique about it being vague. A wave of negative reviews like that, despite the book being highly regarded by a prize, that just draws me in. So I decided to give it a go. This book is simultaneously difficult and easy to summarize. A disgraced professor, divorcing from his wife, plans to escape the city and goes to a house viewing in the countryside. That's it (but it's not). The man's point of view slightly reminded me of the first story in Tony Tulathimutte's Rejection, about a 'nice guy'. The more he speaks, the more you realize what went wrong in his career and…