This book is about Alfonso Nitti, a young clerk in a Trieste bank. Alfonso is generally bored with work; but has high dreams and expectations of himself; but does not follow them through; he finds he is incapable of inner strength or conviction; then he gets lucky in love but again fails to find the means to bring the situation to a positive conclusion; and, in the end, things fall apart. Does this seem mundane? Well, it is. Therefore the title, timidly and correctly chosen - "A Life".
Alfonso is very average indeed, he is anyone and everyone - his thoughts of himself fill his head so he fails to understand what goes on, other's actions and motivations are all black boxes impossible to decipher, he is shallow, not very bright, not very likeable or sociable, fails to understand opportunities and alliances, does not love or hate because he's too fearful of being disliked, swings wildly from narcissism to self-deprecation.
He is indeed a man leading a life, rightly among Thoreau's mass of men living "lives of quiet desperation".
This review of Italo Svevo's work is worth a read https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2002/01/07/true-confessions, there is little to add to it.
Mr. Svevo writes a correct book, maybe slight auto-biographic; but it takes an exceptional sensibility to see and name the smallness in oneself and others.