Such is de Falbe’s skilful manipulation of words, intermingling formal usage with the vernacular, that one learns all the names of his cast and their connections with surprising ease. The principal pleasures of the novel reside in the quality of the writing. For example, there is a series of descriptions of the kind of pain that grows from a neglected small wound. At first there is only ‘a tingling down her leg like a swoop across the keys of a xylophone’. By the time it feels like ‘the heart of a bonfire . . . the steel jaws of a mantrap’, gangrene seems inevitable, perhaps amputation. There are wistful what-ifs and if-onlys in Teresa’s dreams of Lucas and Jimmy’s dreams of Iris, a wonderful woman, who has been glimpsed tantalisingly off-stage, so to speak, in America. However, as Jimmy consoles himself, ‘where can we be private, if not in our dreams? Sometimes, bed is the most glorious, solitary haven for me, even while I lie there beside my wife.’
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