Happily, the author (if not the country) earns a straight-up A+ for taking readers on an enormously enjoyable romp through post-modern love/sex, post-graduate ambition/ennui, post-prison recidivism (tooth for tooth), and post-9/11 paranoia. (But are you actually paranoid if they’re really out to get you?)

The characters—a way-underemployed film studies major named Charlie, and Jainey, a smart but luckless teenager—meet cute (well, after grading her state-mandated achievement test, he stalks her), and they mutually devolve/evolve before semi-triumphantly trading lifestyles, destinies, and even hairstyles.

A professor at Wake Forest University, McNally keeps a light touch—nothwithstanding the shady characters (like Jainey’s scary brother and her mostly incarcerated dad), the shaky Chicagoland neighborhoods, and some unnerving bad karma.

In McNally’s America, someone looking over your shoulder—at work, at home, at school, in public restrooms—is both a comforting promise and a vague threat.

Resistance is futile.

• The Southpaw, by Mark Harris: A funny, first-person tale of a successful, young left-hander in a right-handed world.
• The Long Ball, by Jim Daniels: Modern poems about love, race, sex, and the Detroit Tigers.
• Leonardo Knows Baseball, monotypes by Charles Hobson: This book’s unusual, accordion binding neatly juxtaposes philosophy and the human form.
• Battle Creek, by Scott Lasser: Major issues—sickness, parenting, parents—in the minor leagues.
• Out of Left Field, by Bob Adelman and Susan Hall: Incredibly candid retelling of the Pittsburgh Pirates’s first brutal season without Roberto Clemente.