The fake suspense of waiting to find out what you figure out roughly from page 5 does not kill you. Cornily, the Big Reveal of What Really Happened That Fateful Day is coughed up only on page 247. The schizophrenic brother whose impressionistic memoir/confession we are reading has in some way caused the death of his Down Syndrome brother (yes, this is a blighted family). I mean to say, there’s this big thing which is hinted at in the first few pages and which hangs over the rest of novel like a Big Black Cloud About to Burst Forth With Torrential Rain. This book won the Costa first novel award, so what do I know. So yeah, they still crank out this silly OTT hypegloop.) (Wow, fire that blurb writer! For days you say?! Sheer skill? I suppose with not so much skill a book will only linger for minutes. There are books which, because of the sheer skill with which every word is chosen, linger in your mind for days. But I wouldn’t call mentally ill young people and their lives in and out of institutions a hidden part of life, there are movies ( Broken, Silver Linings Playbook, etc etc) and books ( Henry’s Demons – recommended - and lots of others), it’s not terra incognita. (Referring to the world of the schizophrenic, since that’s what this novel is all about. There are books which let us into the hidden parts of life and make them vividly real. (Well, I actually was reading this most of last night, but that’s because I had insomnia.) There are books you can’t stop reading, which keep you up all night The blurb has these three little sentences: Sorry, Nathan Filer, I come to rain all over your parade. Another novel to prove, if proof was needed, how utterly heartless and without pity I am becoming.
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