A seemingly mid-life crisis story becomes a gripping suspenseful page turner. When the father started seeing the son's girlfriend, things really got interesting. I would definitely recommend this novel to anyone who likes a good thriller.

The title of this book is important. Those words: a perfect sentence. "A" implies that there could be another sentence, that this is but one. "Perfect" means that there is no better sentence, none more fitting or deserved. And "sentence." Do we mean this syntactically or are we talking about punishment? It makes you wonder.

Patrick Starnes does not clarify the titular sentence until late in this book, after he has sent you on Keir's path as a restless, unhappy middle-aged man who begins an affair with a woman who, let's just say, comes with baggage. He falls in love with her, the sort of desperate love that we assign to teenagers or twentysomethings, and he sacrifices the life he has with his wife and two children in order to be with her. In this woman, he sees his chance to escape the dull, lifeless sentence of his life.

You will not always like Keir. There will be times when you want to knock him silly. You will want to shout at him, you will want to beg him to not do what he's about to do or say what he's about to say. Yet you want him to find his way. You want him to feel contentment and peace. For a while, his nomadic life makes you wonder if he can achieve either of those things.

All along, Patrick Starnes builds to a shocking climax, one that will render you speechless. And then we find a new sentence, one that perhaps is perfect.

This is a book that I can tell will stay with me for a while. Patrick Starnes broke my heart, yet he also left me feeling oddly peaceful. I don't think I will forget Keir.

Blurb:

At first I thought this novel was a bit like Joseph Heller's Something Happened. It certainly started in the same vein, navel gazing by a middle aged man who has lost his way and motivation. A tired marriage, kids who are floundering somewhat, and the ennui that generally accompanies life at predictable stages. Of course the text seemed to veer off into familiar territory, that of the older man having a fling with a much younger woman, in this case, his son's girlfriend. While the plot was altogether expected, the writing itself was luscious, I loved the style and verbiage used by the author, indeed that is what pulled me in, however it was not enough to sustain the book until the end, where it meandered off any meaningful path. Maybe that meandering itself was the plot and the point.

When it comes to reading, I seem to be on a roll with Men Who Leave. This time it’s A Perfect Sentence from Patrick Starnes. Kier Buchan, a married fifty something writer of a series of middling-level detective stories is made redundant from his part-time lecturer position at the Open University. This news couldn’t come at a worse time for Buchan. It’s not that he cares that much about the job–he doesn’t. It’s just one more thing that unmoors him from his already unsatisfying life.

When the novel opens, Buchan is sitting in Gatwick airport waiting for a flight and a holiday in Riva del Garda. He’s with his saintly long-suffering, patient wife Fran, and his two children 21-year-old Charlie and 16-year-old Cat. Charlie was only persuaded to come along for the trip when it was agreed that his American girlfriend, bartender Cassie could join them, and while the family, quickly fractures into their own spaces at the airport, Buchan, obviously already emotionally distant from his family, wonders off alone musing about Cassie’s suitability for Charlie.

A Perfect Sentence, which is narrated by Buchan, by the way, begins with a worn, bitterly comic tone. He admits that he doesn’t pay “much attention to the political, social, or commercial lurchings of our tired planet.” Think along the lines of Kingsley Amis at his best, but this mood soon passes as the story becomes much much darker, and Buchan finds himself in full Midlife Crisis mode.

What the hell do I think I’m up to? What male menopausal, pre-prostatic madness have I succumbed to? Back off Keir, back right off. Put this afternoon down to anything you want to, put it down to global warming, the Bermuda Triangle, whatever, but don’t get in any deeper, don’t destroy the lives of those you love simply because you’ve fallen for a redhead with world-class tits and legs that won’t give up. But why the hell not?

It’s not easy to move beyond an almost stomach-churning dislike for this character: tragic past combined with midlife crisis or not. For this reader, there was nothing whatsoever to like about this selfish jerk. An incorrigible snob who dislikes almost everyone in his orbit, he cheats on his wife, abandons his children, and careens around Europe until Fate catches up to him in a big way.

In many ways, this story takes a predictable path (man in his 50s hooks up with a sexually rapacious girl young enough to be his daughter), and yet it’s told with such flair, that it’s impossible to tear our eyes away from Buchan’s train wreck of a life. The author’s choice to tell this tale in the first person dangles the possibility of an unreliable narrator. Is everyone really as small-minded and clichéd as Buchan thinks. Is Fran as saintly as Buchan thinks or has she just learned to tune out and tolerate a man who no longer interests her? There were a couple of characters, for example, Josh and Buchan’s father-in-law, who never move beyond stereotype cardboard-cutouts. Starnes is too good a writer for this to be anything other than Buchan’s narrow, one-dimensional view of two characters who are bit players in his life. At one point, Buchan feels sorry for himself when his long-time lover, Ruth, abruptly tells him to ‘fuck off,’ and Buchan argues that he is unable to understand this behaviour–after all the longtime, no strings-affair, spent in various hotels rooms, seemed to work so well for him. This was an affair that was all about “flying the outer edge of the erotic envelope.” And that’s the root of Buchan’s character: it’s whatever works for him and other people exist as pieces on his chess board.

The novel’s rich imagery is powerful: “a wasp expiring like some Roman orgy victim in the sticky heel of a beer glass.” Or Buchan’s mother-in-law: “once a handsome serene woman, she is now a dessicated Gordain knot of nerves for whom contact with even her close family, let alone the outside world (her bridge four is a miraculous exception) is painful.” I’m not a writer–I’m a reader and there were times that this extremely polished novel is almost too polished in its imagery. That minor issue aside, I enjoyed reading this knowing that Cosmic Justice or Karma or Fate … (you take your pick) careened towards Buchan on a collision course. This is a man who had everything: his health, a lovely, kind, tolerant wife, no money worries, holidays abroad, two children, a nice home, and way too much time on his hands. Yet it was not enough for Buchan. Ah… the burdens of middle class life. Some people drive fast, expensive cars to glamorize the image of themselves, and Buchan uses his affairs to add some level of excitement to a life he’d rather not be attached to.

There’s another aspect of this novel that I’d love to comment on, but I can’t due to spoilers. I will say that there’s the shadow of an alternate, less dramatic outcome that would also have served Buchan his just desserts. Pick your poison.

Review copy

This is an interesting book, at least its premise. The problem with it was its writing style. I found it a little pedantic and over-simplistic. In general, I had a good time with it but I don’t think I’ll remember anything about it in a year or two.

Overall an entertaining read!

See full review here:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2367793316

This book has good bones, a nice structure and some really good lines, like "Why is it so difficult for people to grasp that suicide has very little if anything to do with bank balances and pretty houses or even relationships and all to do with a hole in your being and the inescapable feeling that tomorrow is simply one day too far?"

Dr. Keir Buchan is veering ass-over-teakettle into midlife-crisis, laid off from his university position, with the eldest of his two teenagers readying to leave home in England for MIT; so much so that Keir's tunnel-vision blinds him to the many wonders of his successful and sweet wife Fran. Patrick Starnes is great at describing cities, and this book has a ton of travel in it, so I loved that aspect of it. I liked Keir's backstory about growing up and losing a twin, and also the main story line about the Buchan family traveling intact, together with Charlie's girlfriend Cassie LaPorte, and everybody dealing with Keir's job loss. But I lost patience with Keir for his disturbing series of seriously bad decisions. I had problems with the mysterious Darius Lascelles character, and the credibility of Cassie as grounded character, so the beauty of the epic May-December romance was lost on me. It bothered me that I didn't know how to pronounce the main character's name, but then it bothered me even more when he's renamed Ivor.

<b> Provocateur </b>
Whether you call it a mid-life crisis or the 'grass is greener' syndrome, Keir should have everything he wants yet he has serious reassurance issues with his marriage, his employment and his family. The story is wonderfully written to illustrate a malcontent middle-aged man, fearing being trapped in a relationship, loss of individually, and an end to life’s excitements.

Keir’s wife, Fran, is a clever woman aware of his infidelities in the past but trying to keep the marriage together. Keir and Fran have 2 children, Charlie, besotted by the new love of his life Cassie, and en-route to MIT, and Cat a teenage Goth too cool to be associated with parents. Cassie is a free-spirited, straight talking, non-committal type of woman. In truth, I didn’t care much for any of the characters although they were well developed. Keir, I just couldn’t warm to.

In the end, the marriage fails and Keir jumps into a mesmerising seductive relationship with Cassie. They travel around Europe in a distorted reality, with its own set of challenges. Every action or lack of action has a consequence, so what are the consequences for Keir and Cassie?

The Perfect Sentence is a well-written book with clever detail and dialogue. It is an exploration and exposition of human relationships and how fragile and precarious they are. The perfect relationship match is so difficult to find and many of the issues covered are more reflective of the norm in society today. We are irrational beings, however, we have a judicial system to keep our actions in check should we stray too far.

The book is very well written, with a great moral and ethical challenge, but I couldn’t empathise with any of the characters. Certain scenes did ramble a bit but overall a steady pace to the story.

Many thanks to Thistle Publishing and NetGalley for an ARC version of the book in return for an honest review.

I really loved this novel. I loved everything about this novel and found myself not being able to put it down. Thanks to Red Door Pub and NetGalley for giving me this complimentary copy of this book. Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own.

I don't know whether to term Keir as the hero or the antagonist in this book because he plays both roles so well that I couldn't put this book down. I received an eARC from NetGalley and let's just say that this story opens with a common plot: a middle aged man leaves his wife and family for a young woman. Then it builds on that plot where for Keir, this woman happens to be Cassie, his son's love interest. Keir fails at an attempted suicide and when his son asks him to check up on Cassie, he sleeps with her. Everything else spirals downward after that.
With well developed characters, a non-linear plot and most of all a dynamic lead character, this book's a treat.

It's a common enough theme for a novel. An angst-ridden middle-aged man finds himself redundant on the scrapheap in his 50s, struggles to relate to his family and ends up with a twenty year old girlfriend and, finally, faces the inevitable fallout which, believe me, is quite extreme!

Keir Buchan is the hero, maybe anti-hero, with a competent, sassy wife, Fran, an emotionally confused son, Charlie, and a daughter, called Catherine, who is going through her A Levels and a kind of Gothic phase. Charlie, at the start of the novel, is besotted with a new American girlfriend called Cassie and it all kind of rolls on from there predictably to start with and then, later, surprisingly. Along the way we get a road movie of a journey across southern Europe as everybody's lives become more chaotic. At the end, the resolution is fairly bleak.

Keir is a difficult character, relatively settled in a job at the Open University and then made redundant. I think perhaps we are meant to sympathise with him but I found him increasingly unlikable. He constantly disparages people from a kind of intellectual snobbery so he manages not to like his in-laws, his wife's friends, Cassie's mates and, for long periods of time, his own family. His world view is not pleasant, he behaves badly at dinner parties and is given to nostalgia and self-pity. He also fails to relate to his wife, children and even past lovers but all this is meant to be redeemed by a kind of superior chuckling about the state of the world. He finds trust difficult, some of his reactions to situations are unthinking and he has a tendency to run away and go for long walks rather than confront situations. As you can see, I didn't like him much!

That doesn't matter for the first half of the novel which could be summarised as cynical old bastard against the world but, in the second half, not to give too much away, he falls for the son's girlfriend in a big way. It is hard as a reader to go along with this romantic renewal and excitement and, although poor Cassie joins in, you can't help thinking that she is looking for the dad who deserted her. Keir, meanwhile, has deserted wife and family and doesn't feel guilty enough to my mind.

The dénouement is tragic and unexpected and then, contrary to all we have come to expect, Keir does one decent thing and takes the rap. I think this is glossed as is the way in which Fran finds out what he's done and sort of sympathises as if to approve. Catherine, the daughter, grows up and becomes sensible, surprisingly undamaged by events while the slighted son - totally destroyed - disappears conveniently in India.

It's an entertaining read and a well written story although I found some of the generalisations about people in general, Americans specifically, and foreign places a little second-hand. I warmed to the wife who was trying to hold everything together and, maybe, the idea is that the man with the midlife crisis finally gets what he deserves but I wasn't really convinced that I cared by that stage.