Really beautiful from beginning to end. And in this case, beginning is the narrator's memories of a himself as a somewhat pretentious British schoolboy ("we were book-hungry, sex-hungry, meritocratic, anarchistic") finishing what we would call high school and heading off to college. The period is the late nineteen-sixties, although the narrator reminds us that "most people didn't experience 'the sixties' until the seventies."

And the end is the narrator in his sixties, divorced and feeling distant from his adult daughter who is now focused on her own children. An odd inheritance sets off the recollections of his late childhood that make up the first half of this slim novel, and propel the second half forward as he seeks to understand events from decades earlier.

There isn't much middle -- and the book does not need it -- only these bookends of a life.

I won't spoil the ending, except to say that a certain amount is revealed that in retrospect makes sense of everything else. In a way you are disappointed because, like life, you did not think it really needed to be wrapped up in a bow and all explained. And it was not necessary to keep one's interest in the book. But, you have to admit, it does make a certain amount of sense.