The author is of course famous for his first adult novel “The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time” was of course hugely (and in my view completely deservedly) popular. A classic book.

His next two adult novels “A Spot of Bother” and “Red House” kept to a similar family drama setting.

In this, his fourth adult novel Haddon has exercised his writing muscles – in a Guardian interview he said

“I always want to get to the weird zone – the place where magic can happen believably. I’m not talking about children’s books or science fiction or fantasy but that numinous thing, that sense that there is something more. And with a novel you can do crazy shit. If you can hold the reader’s hand and make them feel safe you can take them anywhere.” … “I thought to myself: ‘If I’m going to write another novel about a family, particularly one about another lower-middle-class family from Swindon, it’s a bit like having the Millennium Falcon but only using it for going to Sainsbury’s. I thought: ‘I want to know what all these knobs and levers do.’

And I think this serves as an analogy for the book.

If someone had only ever used the Millennium Falcon to go to Sainsbury’s but decided to test it to its full capabilities you can imagine that they would indulge themselves in a wild ride, exploring as much of the (fictional) universe as they can and at times to be honest losing a little control. And the experience for the passenger, perhaps a little less fun than that of the driver, I think mirrors the experience of the reader here.

For the book Haddon has of course drawn very heavily on Shakespeare and “Pericles” – Shakespeare himself drawing on his co-author George Watkins and Watkins drawing on various mythological sources and more recent retellings. Co-incidentally of course Ali Smith drew on the same play for “Pericles”.

The brilliance of Shakespeare lies of course in his inventiveness and playfulness with language and in his profound insight into the human condition. It does not generally lie in his preposterous plots. And I think therefore as a corollary, despite all the inventiveness and playfulness (which appropriately earned this book a shortlisting for the 2019 Goldsmith Prize), the plot here does seem rather random at times.

The narrative style is very distinctive combining heavily portentous observations (both our omniscient narrator and many of the characters frequently evaluate the eventual consequences of future meaning of their actions while performing them) with the reproduction of copious amounts of the author’s research (the latter reminding me of Ian McEwan). The first part of this I think can be explained if we assume that much of the story is imagined by Angelica

A highlight for me was the vignette when Wilkins dies and is visited by the ghost of Shakespeare and both his physical and ghostly bodies are abused by the women that he made suffer as a pimp is interesting.

Overall – I was left feeling a little dizzy but I suggest you strap up and take the ride.