Just to spare others the aggravation of dealing with a really counter-intuitive UI quirk:

To examine an object in your inventory, first select the object with the left mouse button, then examine it with a right-click. Seems I either managed to get through chapter one without needing to do this or manged to forget (it's been a few months), but inspecting items is definitely required in chapter two.

You don't have to left click it.
When you hover over something in inventory, it soft selects it already.
I just right clicked stuff every time. ;-)