What to make of this unexpectedly startling novel? Though you may be lured into a false sense of familiarity by mentions in the blurb of Trollopes J and A, and the comfortable middle-class settings (Sussex, Notting Hill), it turns out to be a diatribe against male selfishness, a meditation on approaching death, and an apologia for adultery. And that’s among other things.
Set in the week beginning 6 May 2015 — the day before David Cameron’s unexpected general election triumph — it concerns three marriages well into maturity, each requiring a reappraisal of its sexual politics. Some of this, reading as a middle-aged male nearing 60, as is one of the characters, is close to the bone, if I may so put it.
The defeat of Clegg and Miliband is used to demonstrate one of the characters’ theories that men die twice, first at the end of ascending careers.
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