SALARYMAN by Meg Pei (Penguin: $11.;...

SALARYMAN by Meg Pei (Penguin: $11.; 296 pp.). The first half of Pei’s ambitious novel depicts the circumscribed existence of a low-ranking Japanese executive. Jun Shimada begins as a minor functionary at Yamamoto Electronics: Like a hamster in an exercise wheel, he’s content to work furiously and go nowhere. But when he becomes the director’s personal assistant at the company’s American headquarters, his life disintegrates--along with Pei’s writing. Shimada’s discovery of his true self after a bout of acute alcoholism rings false, and the reunion with his estranged wife seems as implausible as the entanglements on “Melrose Place.”