A taste of Trollope

Even its organization is interesting, no real chapters, but short takes — with titles like “Is That All There Is?,’’ “Fitness Works?,’’ “Blameless and Dashing,’’ “How Come?,’’ “Tenderness,’’ “Routine,’’ “Slapped in the Face’’ — that sometimes move the plot but also go off on little tangents crucial to the story.

It is 2006, and Rossi, an attractive man in his 50s, is trying to achieve some balance four years after the death of his lover, Sam. Although his heart is really in English literature, especially Trollope (he is reading “He Knew He Was Right’’), he is stuck in a well-paying job in the human resources department of Connectrix, a computer company whose offices are in one of those ubiquitous glass boxes of the new century:

“In an attempt to create a semblance of privacy, almost everyone had odd arrangements of books and clothes and soshi screens and plants scattered around their fishbowl offices . . . [and] all the makeshift barriers made the interior look like a tenement in Brasilia.’’

In these offices are an amusing and sometimes pathetic mix — the snooping secretary who adores God, the self-serving boss, the spoiled employee, the paranoiac in a discrimination lawsuit, and several others whom McCauley presents with such precision that you have no trouble remembering who is who.

To escape his stultifying job and his present significant other, Conrad, Richard has become an exercise freak — with memberships at two gyms and appointments with a very funny personal trainer. More important, he owns a tiny studio apartment called The Club where he and his insignificant other, Benjamin, meet.