I really liked Golden Hill, I remember bits as brilliant and such a pleasure to read, the way the prose could move from playful meta to capturing just the softness of snow falling. So I was looking forward to this and it’s good, very good in parts, but maybe lacking greatness? Strip away the high concept opening (which seems kinda extra in more than one sense, unnecessary and irritating ) and this is a tender, generous literary take on Our Friends in the North of maybe the Seven Up documentaries, with a clearly Christian ethos that pokes up more than I expected. Good Christian, I think, tentative about judgement and ready to extend compassion to everyone, not afraid of hard edged reality but never quite able to respond with any hardness (or bite) of its own. It made me think of Julian Barnes or maybe Jonathan Coe, that type of English novel that’s a mix of high concept and kinda highbrow soap opera. What I did like a lot tho was the London stuff. I’m being harder on it than I expected to be!