Home of the Whopper

Patrick deWitt’s third novel, the ­delightfully titled Undermajordomo Minor, is a picaresque tale that calls to mind such exuberant works as the novels The Princess Bride, Candide, The Giant, O’Brien, and Philip Pullman’s version of Fairy Tales from the Brothers Grimm.

Things that Undermajordomo Minor (possibly a nod to Catch-22’s Major Major Major Major) does not resemble much: deWitt’s first novel, Ablutions, about a Los Angeles bartender and his observations of his customers, or his second, The Sisters Brothers, which features two Old West assassins hired to kill a gold prospector. The latter was deWitt’s breakthrough, winning great reviews and mega sales, along with the Governor General’s Award, the Rogers Trust Fiction Prize, the Stephen Leacock Medal and the Prix des librairies du Québec, and landing on the shortlists for the Man Booker Prize, the Scotiabank Giller Prize and the Walter Scott...