Finally, a fictional novel that combines modern-day Britain with non-Western thinking! This is both an existential and experimental book in one. I hate using the term "unputdownable", but I couldn't really stop reading this book.

The start of it threw me a bit. It's like reading Alan Moore's "Jerusalem" and Peter Ackroyd's "Hawksmoor" while being as accessible as Sally Rooney's "Normal People"; the experimental bits didn't put me off, but actually made me instantly want to dig deeper into the book.

The dialogue might seem lackadaisical but is, to me, engaging:

She didn’t miss the acting work but she got bored sometimes, when Lanny went to school, when her husband went in to the city. She was writing a book, she said. A murder thriller. Sounds bloody horrid, I said. It is very bloody and horrid, she said, but thrilling.

We trampled down the dog-walk path towards Hatchett Wood and it was ever so beautiful. The thick wall of green between the common and the wood bursting with life, clematis clambering through and over it, a properly paintable riot, the yarrow glowing a bit, the blackthorn and maple all hugged up together, foxgloves leaning out like thin beckoning arms and I was still wiping tears of laughter from my eyes and considering how surprising it was, me, an old man, tailend of a good career but a mainly lonely life, finding such a good friend in this little kid.