This was a book which has generated some discussion previously (here, here and to an extent here) so I was prepared to either love it or hate it.

In the event, I enjoyed it, though not massively. The Pacific Ocean descriptions (and to a lesser but important extent the bits in Toronto) were compelling. I wasn’t quite so sure about the parts in India or Mexico. When we got to the bit with the French sailor, and then the bit with mysterious island, I had a good idea of what was up, and so felt a lot happier about the ultimate reveal than I did with Atonement, especially because we already know from an early stage that the narrator survives. The basic message seemed to me to be about the importance of Story, rather than the deep messages about human nature that some reviewer found.

From the unread books shelf between Earth Logic, by Laurie Marks, and The Shakespeare Handbook, by RW Maslen and Michael Schmidt.