2008-03-26 Not up to his usual standards

I've read about half of Everett's books and this is the first I'd give fewer than five stars.

His other books have covered more or less serious issues with more or less humour, but the humour, often dry, has always been there in the background to act as a counterpoint to the homily. However, this novel is big on homily and scant on humour, causing the rendition of a serious message to lack punch - and also making this a less enjoyable read than his other works.

Allied to grammatical errors at the printers - mispunctuated speech (in my hardback copy) does make it hard to work out who's speaking - this ends up reading like the discovery draft of something brilliant.

I don't want to knock Mr Everett - he remains my favourite living author - but I think he dropped his standards with this book.