I don’t think that before reading Michael Frayn’s previous novel, Headlong, I’d read any of his work.
I’ve certainly seen some of his plays – most notably Copenhagen about the meeting of Bohr and Heisenberg in Copenhagen during the Second World War. I taped it not too long ago, when it was shown on BBC4.
I’ve also seen a production of Uncle Vanya which he’s translated.
So it didn’t take too big a decision, to pick up his latest Whitbread Award winning latest.
I try never to read too much about what a book is going to be about before I start, and I only really knew that this took place amongst children in wartime Britain. Well I suppose that’s all you need to know.
To begin with, I thought that it was going to recover the ground covered by Atonement, where a child’s lie has massive repercussions. But this isn’t a story on the scale of that, even though it revolves around a similar incident.
I raced through this and am looking forward to trying some Frayn’s reissued older work. In particular, Towards the End of the Morning which is supposed to be a Fleet Street classic (can get it in a 2 for �10 offer at Blackstones, maybe with Lucky Jim).
In the meantime, I’m torn over my next book. The Dark Lady of DNA has just been published (and I got it yesterday lunchtime in another 2 for �10 offer – this time at Waterstones, with The Secret State itself an interesting read). And when I got home, I found that my trade paperback copy of The White Lioness by Henning Mankell had arrived.
All in all I have a lot of reading to do!