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Title: Pretentious and Amateurish
Review: This is one of the worst novels I have read in a long time. The writing, which attempts to be post-modern, is frequently pretentious and often simply incompetent. The main character becomes more and more unrealistic and unsympathetic as the story progresses - especially since he never seems to remember the most important events that occurred during the period of time covered by the narrative. The ending - where the author desperately tries to tie all the loose ends together in the last ten pages - is laughable.Normally I would have tossed this book aside after the first thirty pages, which are dreadfully slow. But I kept reading to see how bad it could get. It exceeded all my expectations.I have the feeling that Mr. Frayn wrote a single draft of this book and then turned it in to his publisher as good enough. It isn't.
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