“The Point of No Return” is a catastrophe novel, a warning novel, telling how terrible the payback for weakness can be. “Korsakoff Syndrome”—that’s the name of the illness from which the novel’s main hero tries, unsuccessfully, to recover. Each shot of liquor, slowly but inevitably changing his mind day by day, brings him closer to the edge beyond which there are no loved ones, no friends, no prestigious work—and not even the past.