Liam’s story is animated by all the homey little details of ordinary life that make Ms. Tyler’s narratives feel so intimate and recognizable, as if we were flipping through an album of snapshots belonging to a relative or neighbor. But his story also turns out to be slighter than Ms. Tyler’s best work, tipping over into the sentimentality she is prone to and eschewing the ambition of her last novel, “Digging to America.” Whereas that book opened out into a commodious meditation on identity and belonging — what it means to be part of a family, a culture, a country — this one devolves into a predictable and highly contrived tale of one man’s late midlife crisis.

Liam’s disengagement is a symptom of depression. And while novels are populated by the luckless and lovelorn, depressed people are not very funny, even when they do funny things.