false Okay, but really just a novel about a middle-aged guy's relationships. 0 2009-07-08T00:18:05-07:00 990500 320 2009-07-08T00:18:05-07:00 The next novel on the BFA shortlist... 0 2009-07-04T14:24:49-07:00 974740 50 2009-07-04T14:24:49-07:00 3 0 false false Tue Jul 07 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Sat Jul 04 14:24:27 -0700 2009 Wed Jul 08 04:48:54 -0700 2009
William Heaney got involved in some supernatural shenanigans at university and now, middle-aged, is up to his ears in dodgy deals that are starting to fall apart - and he sees demons everywhere. In the middle of this he meets an fascinating and beautiful young woman who takes an unaccountable interest in him, but he still feels guilty about the way his previous relationships ended.

This wasn't bad, but the fantasy stuff seemed like just a bit of icing to make an everyday novel about a middle-aged guy falling for a younger woman more interesting. The demon stuff seems a bit intrusive even from the very early pages, like a bit of Piers Anthony being ladled into a Melvyn Bragg novel.

I'm happy for people to write relationship novels, but it's just not what I really go for. Relationships, emotions, love - in the books I tend to like best that stuff is all there to add ballast to a book, to give the protagonists a reason to fight the monsters, or the aliens, or whatever... What disappointed me with this book was that as it went on it became clear that the relationship stuff was the meat of it. The supernatural elements could have been almost completely removed without affecting the plot at all.

Of course, that doesn't make it a bad book, just one that didn't appeal to me.

There were some quite bad mistakes in this edition, though, to the point where I started to wonder if it was some kind of metatextual element that would lead to a flourish at the end... Antonia magically knows Otto's name (p. 81 - probably the result of dialogue being trimmed incautiously), a CID interview is referenced that doesn't come up anywhere else (p. 94 - maybe a scene was cut?), and then there's "bare to repeat it" (p. 162), "want her to now it" (p. 143) and "my tongue froze to roof my mouth" (p. 162). You expect that kind of thing in self-published and small press work, but it's a surprise to see it from a major publisher.

Even the title is annoyingly inaccurate, since it's really the memoir of a master forger's friend, the guy who sells the forgeries. By the end you could say it's been justified, but only bearly - sorry, barely.]]>