Transparent Things revolves around the four visits of the hero–sullen, gawky Hugh Person–to Switzerland … As a young publisher, Hugh is sent to interview R., falls in love with Armande on the way, wrests her, after multiple humiliations, from a grinning Scandinavian and returns to NY with his bride… . Eight years later–following a murder, a period of madness and a brief imprisonment–Hugh makes a lone sentimental journey to wheedle out his past… . The several strands of dream, memory, and time [are] set off against the literary theorizing of R. and, more centrally, against the world of observable objects.
–Martin Amis