The household will be happy to have my attention again. It hasn't seen a flicker of it since I started reading this book. I've seen the movie. Liked it very much. Yet even knowing what was going to happen, the story in the book still felt new to me. That's a quality in the writing; it's the kind that makes everything new. And by the end of the book, the crystalline narration , that is never precious, had made his memories, my memories. I haven't had a narrator do that since Nick Carraway. And the dialogue too, is just...right. Dialogue, when it's perfect is that--it's right. It doesn't call attention to itself. I'm in the room with them, and they can't see me. What an ear Hartley had. And often it's a 12 year-old asking the questions. Not easy. But he presses every advantage there is in this, while avoiding every pitfall.
The cricket game around the middle, was also exciting. Everything I know about cricket is from 'Netherland', and Masterpiece Theater, which is probably about as useful as having all your baseball knowledge from 'Underworld'. Hartley had all the undercurrents flowing while he sneakily explained the game just enough so I could understand the match played on the field and the one played in the stands.
The story, overall, is told quietly. Leo's plates get shifted. We all know how that plays out on the surface. The epilogue describes a life lived in aftershock.