Paul Torday was 59 when his first novel, the highly acclaimed Salmon Fishing in the Yemen, was published in 2006. Since then, he can barely have stepped away from his keyboard. The Hopeless Life of Charlie Summers is his fourth novel and it represents a return to the comic tone of Salmon Fishing.
Or at least it does in part. There are scenes of high comedy here, but some pretty dark swirls too. And hanging over the whole book is the question of what makes for a fulfilled life. The narrator, Hector Chetwode-Talbot — known, mercifully as ‘Eck’ — is a former soldier who has drifted into the City. He is, as he says of himself, ‘a minor character, a walk-on part’, whose duties consist principally of taking rich clients out to lunch and promising to make them even richer by investing in his firm’s Styx Fund.
As this is the turn of the century with the City awash with money, these promises are not hard to keep.
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