The Dog by Joseph O'Neill

It will surprise no one who read the author's previous book 'Netherland' that this is a sad book about sad people who really do not perk up as the story progresses.  Both books were long listed for the Booker prize and both books have that particular literary prize's characteristic of great writing.

This book focuses on a disenchanted New Yorker whose long term relationship with his girlfriend is brought to an abrupt end by him one day.  She wants a baby and as so often happens when you wait until the last minute and you want something very badly that relies on youth and is adversely affected by anxiety, it becomes impossible to achieve.  So infertility clinics and drugs are wrecking havoc with both their love life and their relationship until one day, without so much as talking about it or giving a warning sign, he quits.  Which makes his girlfriend very angry indeed, so angry that she strips him of all his money, and he takes a job in Dubai in order to be employed.

The Emirates do not come off as attractive in this book, nor does the man at the center of it.  He is involved in high paid but meaningless work in a society that is high cost and without a soul.  So he floats along for the entire book until the whole thing comes to an abrupt and sudden end.  It is a cautionary tale.