Undermajordomo Minor by Patrick deWitt
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
This book was a ton of fun. You have a protagonist who surely shares DNA with Candide in Lucy Minor, who strikes out, oblivious to his own place in the world and in the hearts of even his family (his mother has his room rented before he finishes walking down the garden path). And Patrick de Witt is very good at setting up those little surreal scenes where Lucy will blunder in headlong. The book has a lighter undercurrent and seems (just slightly) less tightly wound than his earlier book, The Sisters Brothers, but with very similar humor.
As the book went on it grew deeper than simply a series of pratfalls for our hapless hero and, for me, it rates only just behind The Sisters Brothers.