I had really enjoyed A. M. Homes' memoir The Mistress's Daughter a few years back, but had never quite got on with her fiction; even the much-hyped This Book Will Save Your Life just didn't do it for me. This, however, I think is a tremendously good book, in that Jonathan Franzen State-of-the-Nation satirical genre. It's not everyone's cup of tea, and you do have to be in the mood for it, because this book, like Franzen's, is a bit of a steamroller. There's enough plot in the first twenty pages to fill most average length novels, and there's another 460 to go; you really do wonder where the hell this book is going to go after that. By the end, the reader is exhausted, but satisfied. Essentially, it's a novel about two brothers: George, the older, better looking, more successful, happily married one, and the narrator Harry, scholarly, a bit dull, envious of his brother, and secretly in love with his brother's wife..it's at times surreal, blackly funny, uncomfortable, sensitive; reminding me of John Irving's better early work. This book deserves its acclaim. It will challenge and confront the reader, but you won't read many other books quite like it.