Ok, it won the Booker Prize. It did seemed pretty well written, although, there were occasional jumps out of the 3rd person omniscient into 'narrator has no idea what is going in POV' (most notably in Libor's final train journey to Eastbourne) which were strange and jarring.

Mostly, I struggled to get through this book. I was given it as a gift, otherwise I would have abandoned it part way through. I just hated all the characters (ok, Libor was likable). I couldn't see wanting to spend any time with them, much less read hundreds of pages about their lives and thoughts. I would read a few pages and just feel so icky about them I had to put it down for a while. Does not being Jewish exclude me from understanding the whiney self-obsessed navel gazing that pretty much all the characters wallowed in throughout the book? I suspect though it wasn't a cultural divide that made me dislike it.

Treslove is shallow and creepy. I can't think of any reason I would ever want much to do with Finkler. None of the rest of the characters seemed to have much substance to them outside of Treslove/Finkler's worlds. Maybe the novel raises important questions about Israel and Palestine but I would rather read a pamphlet about the issues than read it through all these character's point of view. I am quite relieved to have finished it and can move on to other books now.