Review "A novel of multi-level brilliance, which offers a smart, funny mystery built around ethical concerns over privacy and biography, while casting a beady eye on workplace politics and male midlife crises" (Anthony Cummins Daily Mail)"Adept, attentive and occasionally beautiful ... When the poetry starts to break through, the book comes alive – reverberatingly, ravishingly so. Everything is illuminated... enter the revivifying excitements of adultery, incest, euthanasia; sex and lust and love; dreams, mortality and death... exquisitely metered, intimate and yet profound, glimmeringly intelligent, slyly sensual ... A worthwhile, interesting and impressive achievement" (Edward Docx The Guardian)"Generously and skilfully written ... The unravelling of the novel’s moral perplexity is both ingenious and persuasive… A pleasing and very satisfying novel." (Allan Massie The Scotsman)"A dark and compelling tale of what we leave behind us when we die" (Alex Preston The Guardian)"A stylist and satirical take on Kindle-era publishing, and is also a timely interrogation on the pertinence of "rampant masculinity" in contemporary fiction." (Kitty Grady Financial Times)"A clever, neatly constructed mystery -- and the poems are the best thing about it" (Anthony Gardner The Mail on Sunday)"Many pleasures ... Matt's domestic scenes confirm how good Morrison is on family life" (James Walton The Times)"A cunning literary novel… Seriously probing about poetry, its origins and repercussions." (David Grylls The Sunday Times)"Entertaining, well written and acute ... Morrison has an observant eye" (Piers Paul Read The Tablet)"Morrison's prose is easy, stylish ... it is often elegant in the way it depicts marriage, secrecy, and the fragile relationships between friends and spouses" (Irish Times) About the Author Born in Skipton, Yorkshire, Blake Morrison is the author of bestselling memoirs, And When Did You Last See Your Father? (winner of the J.R. Ackerley Prize for Autobiography and the Esquire Award for Non-Fiction) and Things My Mother Never Told Me ('the must read book of the year' - Tony Parsons),. He also wrote a study of the disturbing child murder, the Bulger case, As If. His acclaimed recent novels include South of the River and The Last Weekend. He is also a poet, critic, journalist and librettist. He lives in South London.
W**D
Not Morrison's Best
I'm quite a fan of Blake Morrison's work, both his prose and poetry, but I have to say this is one of his weaker efforts. The plot is glacial, the prevarication of main character Matt as he balances his role as executor to a dead poet's remaining work with the objections of the widow seemingly endless. And while all this advances syllable by syllable to a rather predictable, prosaic conclusion, we're treated to regular interjections from his foul-mouthed wife, who has mysteriously married a man for whom she has nothing but criticism and contempt.I generally love novels that deal with the subjects of creativity, and the nuts and bolts of publication, perhaps because they seem to bring closer the kind of life I would have chosen for myself if I'd been blessed with talent and a good education, but this doesn't compare well with others in the genre, one of the best being one third of Paul Auster's New York Trilogy.It's by no means bad, and still preferable to a lot of the other over-praised efforts currently being published as literary fiction heads for extinction, but I doubt it will survive the cut of desert-island novels on most people's bookshelves.
D**B
Disappointing. I kept waiting for something - anything - ...
Disappointing. I kept waiting for something - anything - to happen but it doesn't.
M**H
Five Stars
excellent
A**R
Where there's a will...
Blake Morrison, who used to work on newspaper books pages, has written of the world he knows. His main character is a failing deputy editor of the books pages on a newspaper not unlike The Observer. His old friend, a poet, has died, making him his literary executor. When a stash of unpublished and risque poems by the dead man is found, should the poet's will be respected and the work published? Or should they be suppressed? The story is told fluently and with uncluttered prose. The characters are brahmin London-Left, with all the attendant presumptions. It is hard to warm to many of them. The plot has a couple of good twists but there is something suffocating about Morrison's world with its off-the-peg attitudes.
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5 days ago
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