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–>Hmm, I liked this at the time, but it’s one of those things it doesn’t do to think too much about.
Michael Frayn is largely awesome (Noises Off, Copenhagen, the early bureaucracy-gone-mad farce “The Tin Men”). And Skios is largely well-done farce, but has the problems associated with farce (especially around women – here there are four. Three are outright figures of fun, and the one who is marked as especially competent is also especially and inexplicably incompetent at crucial moments, due to her lovelorn-ness).
It’s a bit like the opening to Austin Powers 2, where he travels back in time. Basil Exposition (Michael York) counsels him not to think too much about the plot devices needed to make the fun stuff happen…
Verdict – read, but don’t re-read, especially if you go and read the reviews in the New Statesman and Indie…
Connections
- Julian Barnes A History of the World in Ten and a half chapters (for an academic forced to churn out drivel)
- David Lodge Small World (using the device of an impending lecture and how will the deliverer get out of it)
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