Blake Morrison

Great read. Enjoyed this very much. Initially a little confused with the characters being introduced in sequential short chapters, but soon got used to this. Characters well drawn and story carried me along. Would certainly read more of his novels.
Libby and Nat are a married couple. She works for then runs her own ad agency. Nat is a narcissist, who puts his “writing” above everything and so does not appreciate his wife and children. He has an affair with a student from his creative writing class Anthea. The novel starts on the day of Tony Blair’s election to PM and continues to about 2002.… (mehr)

I wanted to like this book more than I did. Brisk pace, could visualize characters, good plot and use of unreliable narrator. It may have been edited down a tad too much, as a few more paragraphs to establish Ollie’s reliability and give the female characters more sentences of backstory would have helped the dynamics. When using an unreliable narrator (Ian) it’s important to provide just a little more likability, just enough so the reveals pack more punch. A good beach read but I wish it had some really great sentences or one or two incredibly keen insights.

One aspect that was done very well was expanding the idea of an unreliable narrator to Ollie and Daisy as well (Em, Ian’s wife, appears to be more reliable). We all tweak our realities here and there and there is good foreshadowing re the nature of truth. Very good mechanics overall but I was left with the impression of a book written with a technical map in hand.… (mehr)