It’s rare I loathe a book, but here we are. It has many good reviews, and was longlisted for the Booker, so I am the minority in this view. But really. First of all, it’s all very lyrical. This is always annoying. Try how this potentially good piece of dialogue is ruined
Personally speaking, Maurice? My arse isn’t right since the octopus we ate in Malaga.
Is it saying hello to you, Charlie?
It is, yeah. And of course the octopus wasn’t the worst of Malaga.
…. They look into the distance. They send up their sighs. Their talk is a shield against feeling
Second of all, it’s all about tough men, and it pretends like it is supposed to show how terrible the consequences of violence are. Meanwhile clearly this book is all about the romance of violence. I don’t need to google the author to find out the author is a man. It’s almost always men who like to spend their novels thinking about violence, and I don’t think we need to think that hard to find out why that might not be so interesting for women. I just don’t need to live in their fantasy