From Never Enough by Joe McGinniss, which I blogged about:
One day she noticed that Michael wasn’t wearing the [$7000] watch [she’d given him]. He was embarrassed to tell her why. Finally, he said he’d told his brother Lance about the affair but Lance had been born again and told Michael he was immoral. More to the point, he told Michael he was fired. They argued. Finally, Lance said that Michael could keep his job in return for the watch.
Shades of the indulgences that upset Martin Luther! You don’t find this sort of detail in other books.
It’s not quite the same. Absurdistan and Then We Came to the End are novels. Never Enough is not. But you’re right that I might like Then We Came to the End, I’ve heard good things about it.