It's like a 300-page joke with 100-page setup and 200-page punchline. You already got it, but the author goes on and on with it, without any surprises at all. It is well-written, so it will keep you entertained, there are some excellent tiny details, but the book, in general, is really obvious and predictable. It is not bad, but I can't recommend it to anyone. ( )

I've read some reviews. I identify with other people's feeling that even though nothing happens, reading this novel is extremely enjoyable. I think what makes it so is the fact that many of us just like to see life repeated in fiction. We want the difference between our lives and the stories to be restricted to the fact that the characters in the stories live elsewhere, do slightly different things, and meet slightly different people compared to those that exist in our lives. We just want to have a reasonably different experience, that's all.

Everything in this novel is pleasantly, even curiously ordinary. However, there's just this one thing, this one thing that almost ruined the book for me: the death of Deakin ! Can anyone please acknowledge that Deakin is dead - that Deakin, a man in his prime, has been stupidly dragged down by the stupid chain into the bottom of the stupid lake !

Our beloved protagonist and his host display brutal practicality. They just ask each other if they can swim, having established that they both can't, they go on to discuss the future of the ice-cream truck and the fucking milk-round. What bothers me most is that this kind of behaviour is extremely uncharacteristic of the protagonist. He is a sensitive character. But when it comes to Deakin, he doesn't even tell us whether they fished him out, gave him a funeral... he doesn't report the reaction of the village people. Just why?

The author treats the only extraodinary event in this story as if it's just one more ordinary event. I don't see the fucking artistic or philosophical point of this. If you think that the point from this is that it is pointless, and you're happy about that, Fuck you! ( )

Ok, please explain to me how a book where "nothing happens" and there is NO character development and only the most basic dialogue can keep me turning the pages? I literally started reading it this morning and could not stop. I knew the shit was going to hit the fan eventually, but when? How?

And when it did, I may have gasped out loud. Ha ha. Brilliant, Mr. Mills. Brilliant ( )

Well that was pretty much a waste of time. Apparently Mr Mills has a reputation for dead pan. He certainly confirmed that. A tale full of lifeless detail leading to an all too predictable denouement. Cardboard cut out characters doing exactly as you would expect of them. No twist, no turn just endless plodding. ( )

Not quite as excellent as his first book, but still quite good. I will keep going with Mills, but I worry that his schtick will get old. Still, this one has another slightly unsettling but delicious ending. ( )