What's this book about?

Good question. This is where I'm meant to write something snazzy to get your attention. I've tried to do that on the Amazon page for the book, and that's probably about as snazzy with-a-bite-sized-aphorism that I'm going to get. So, if you've got this far, you want to learn a little bit more. So here's a more fleshed out synopsis:

Goodbye, Mr. Descartes is a new novel by the author A.J. Walsh. It follows the life of the main protagonist, Carter de Sénse, through a series of twenty-four intertwining chapters. Twelve of these chapters are travel narratives, written in the first person, as Carter journeys around the world with his partner, Ana, visiting a different part of the globe in each chapter. You get a sense of the wonder they feel as well as becoming embedded in the nuances of their relationship courtesy of a series of Platonic dialogues that run the course of each chapter. These conversations that Ana and Carter engage in attempt to get at the heart of issues that face us all, from our destruction of the natural environment, our survival motivations, our ethical decision-making process and our collective purpose as a species. As they travel, Carter becomes emboldened by his own theories and ideas on how to solve some of these issues, even though he is for all intents and purposes a “non-expert”. He does however think that he has discovered a critical flaw in the way society operates and has a truly radical solution, one that would also require an enormous paradigm shift in the way society functions. These travel narrative chapters are also deliberately out of chronological order. The rationale behind this is because of the way they intertwine with the other twelve chapters. Those chapters are written in the third person by an unknown observer of Carter’s life. They are also a chronological description of key events in his life. These chapters become more detailed as we move towards an unknown “present” moment when Carter reaches a crossroads in his life. He finds himself in state of psychological turmoil dealing with dramatic and emotionally devastating events in his personal life. These events also coincide with a shattering change to his worldview. He suddenly starts experiencing strange coincidences and events in his life that he cannot rationalise with his scientific training and materialistic views until one day he has an epiphany that changes everything. The world that he thinks he has lived in all his life isn’t that world at all – it’s a shadow dancing on a wall, tricking him into believing it is real. Carter’s earlier theories about a critical flaw in society pale into insignificance with the true magnitude of what he has discovered. Everything is, as Carter discovers, connected. Yet having this knowledge is a cruel double-edged sword as he comes to realise that he can’t tell a soul.

So, that's a much more complete exposition than you'll find on Amazon. The book itself is fairly long. You'll certainly get your money's worth! The paperback version is in standard 9x5 format and comes out at about 540 pages and 180,000 words of text. I've pretty much done everything myself so far, from the front and back cover design, to the book formatting, to the ebook conversion and now, probably the most daunting task, the marketing. Yikes. That's not my strong suit - selling and marketing. It would be nice if someone else did all that. Any volunteers?