Caleb Crain's "Necessary Errors" - NYTimes.com Antonin Kratochvil/VII (1987) International destination: Josefov, the old Jewish quarter of Prague. In the mid-90s, I told a woman I met at a party that I was moving to Prague. "Oh, everyone moves to Prague," she said, distinctly unimpressed. "But I'm moving to Prague to write a novel," I said. "Oh, everyone moves to Prague to write a novel," she replied. When I arrived in the city a few weeks later, I discovered she wasn't that far off. In the immediate aftermath of its non­violent Velvet Revolution, during which the Czech Republic transitioned from Communism to democracy, Prague was filled with young American adventurers like myself who'd come with plans of making various forms of art, though mostly what we did was hang out. We'd been seduced by the promise of cheap rents, cheap food, cheap beer, and perhaps a famous Levi's ad in which a raffish young American in Prague trades a pair of jeans for a car. This is the world that the noted literary critic Caleb Crain brings vividly to life with his gently meandering debut novel, "Necessary Errors." In painstaking detail, the book documents the daily existence of a circle of English-speaking expatriates in early-90s Prague. There's a good deal of teaching English, beer drinking, hooking up with men and women of varying nationalities, and engaging in the kinds of conversations on Life, Literature and Love common to most college dorm rooms. The good-natured fun eventually comes to an end when the book's protagonist, Jacob Putnam, is admitted to grad school. Crain wonderfully evokes the novel's setting in a few deft strokes. He's a master of the thumbnail character sketch, populating his novel with memorable supporting characters like Jacob's genial housemate, Honza; his stern landlord, Mr. Stehlik; and a gay Czech friend named Ota who favors preppy polo shirts, sometimes adorned by "a lavender wool sweater, which he wore draped over his shoulders like a lady's mink." Crain also provides telling details of expat life, like the joy of finding a store that sells cornflakes, or the constant difficulty of making plans to meet up with friends without the conveniences of landlines, let alone cellphones or electronic communication. Even better, he captures the slow pace of life of his innocents abroad, whose biggest adventure is choosing a bar for a drink. As Crain writes: "It was their being together that was exceptional, rather than anything any of them did or might do. It wasn't necessary for anyone outside their group to recognize it. The book's success in recreating the languid rhythms of its characters" social lives is also its biggest stumbling block. Though the author and characters are members of Generation X, the novel's fragmentary action feels more suited to a demographic accustomed to seeing life framed in disconnected status updates. We watch the characters teach improvised English lessons for grateful and somewhat naïve Czech students, do laundry and grocery shopping, get sick and then get better, go on jaunts to Berlin and Krakow, search for English-language books and loiter endlessly at various watering holes. Affairs begin, break off and begin again with new partners. Yet for all this activity, the characters don't seem to learn much or change in any significant way. The book is rich in anecdote but impoverished in its overall purpose - or what is known in less literary circles as plot. A series of charming vignettes might have worked better in a shorter book, but the aimlessness becomes wearying over nearly 500 pages. More crucially, as a main character, Jacob isn't quite dynamic enough to hold the reader's attention. He is a courteous (perhaps to a fault), intelligent, white, middle-class, politically slightly left-of-center American who's mildly disaffected for reasons that are not immediately clear. He says he wants to be a writer but doesn't write very much, and doesn't seem to know what kind of writer he wants to be or why he wants to be one. His mother sends him magazines from America, but we know little otherwise about his family - a striking omission in a novel about a young man grappling with his sexual identity, a struggle that feels more theoretical than personal. In fact, when Jacob has sex, Crain's usual sharp focus becomes gauzy, and the formerly detailed language becomes the vague "rolling around" or polite ­"lovemaking." Aaron Hamburger is the author of the story collection "The View From Stalin's Head" and the novel "Faith for ­Beginners."