It is a pleasure read and it gives you the feeling it was written for pleasure by John Lanchester. Inspires me to read more of his writing. Maybe, next one on my to read list will be his most famous novel Capital.
The plot is engaging as all revenge stories are. Closer to the end, it becomes predictable and a bit repetitive. Not all plot twists need to be explained as the narrator Kate does…But the plot meanderings are not the main source of the pleasure of reading. It is the language – incisive and witty. Lanchester has the gift of capturing and representing truthfully the class and age of his characters by rendering their conversations – intellectual discourse, dinner banter, intimate dialogue. He makes you reflect on the nature of willful or just fashionable socializing, of courtship and friendship, of passion and jealousy – through language. Kate, one of the two main narrators in the novel gets plunged into misery by witnessing her most intimate marital discourse becoming the dialogue of a popular TV show. Phoebe – the second narrator, pleases most with her cynical and blunt descriptions of her manipulative and deeply unhappy mother Sarah.
The other feature of this novel that contributes greatly to the pleasure of reading it is the deeply amoral nature of its characters (but they are all super intelligent). There are no “nice” people in this book (except for probably Phoebe’s partner). Thus the book, never gets didactic. It just follows the domino effect of people’s egotistical behavior – the effect of “look what YOU made me do”. Everybody is “innocent” as the ending suggests. It is other people that make us behave badly and Lanchester’s point is that this bad behavior is quite enjoyable. The characters just can’t help it.
The description of the Oxford students’ love triangle was great. The seventies atmosphere, the college culture, the excitement of complex and playful but in the end life-defining relationships – all captured so well! Makes you realize how the act of “falling in love” breakes all the rules of decency and has nothing to do with morality or generosity of spirit.