Glass is the first of Sam Savage’s novels that I’ve had the pleasure to read. But I understand that it possesses certain bonds with the author’s previous books: As in Firmin: Adventures of a Metropolitan Lowlife (2006), the reader will devote more attention than usual to a rat (yes, I said a rat), and as in The Cry of the Sloth (2009), writers and varieties of writerly experience play a significant role.

When Glass opens, protagonist Edna is thinking. We soon surmise that nearly all of Edna’s thoughts find their way through her fingertips to her typewriter keys and onto the innumerable sheets of paper that litter her apartment. (Edna may visit her local Starbucks, but even if she could afford a laptop, one cannot imagine her joining other writers at work there.)