** OK **
Tournament of Books : 2014
And by day we talk in circles
Slow getting nowhere.
The narrative was drowning in words, coming up for air only to gulp more words. There was more than a little self indulgence ... oooh look ... my navel! ... a shame, as there were some vibrant pieces of writing. It just laboured too much as a novel.
The main character, who joins a travelling theatre company taking a politically charged play on tour, lets life lead him by the nose. Like a tsunami, it all washed over him and sweeps him away in its dirty maelstrom. For me the trouble was that, by the end, I sighed for him in his disastrous predicament, but that was about as much empathy as I could muster. He was too much "merely a player" in his own destiny.
All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players:
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts ...
