"A thrilling and dryly amusing novel of middle-class midlife ambition, regret, competitiveness and envy."
“Things are not always what they seem”. This recurring remark cuts to the core of a gripping novel in which few of the characters say anything without excruciating consideration of how they appear to the outside world. Fuelled by first-rate character portraits and a killer context, The Book Game is a sultry summer thriller that explores middle class conceits and mid-life unravelling in the context of a writers’ retreat.
One hot August, a group of old friends gather at a country house outside Cambridge, where Lawrence, a Cambridge academic whose wife’s family own the historic house, has planned a writers’ retreat in agonising detail. Among his guests are a flamboyant literary agent and one of her clients, who’s just bagged a big Netflix documentary deal, Josh, Lawrence’s former PhD student, a painfully self-conscious, would-be scriptwriter who hates his teaching job and feels like a failure, Lucy, a successful academic who’s about to be divorced, and a beautiful Portuguese artist.
By day, the group variously write, read, research, and moon around the grounds and pool. By night, much wine is quaffed, and the characters’ performative self-consciousness, regrets, and simmering desires and bitterness threaten to erupt, just as Lawrence receives a real threat in the form of anonymous message: “things are not always what they seem just ask Lawrence lovely house garden wife job also students but you know what’s really going on lawrence do you lawrence?”
Sizzling with suspense and an escalating sense that anything might happen in this tinderbox situation, The Book Game is a sharply astute and deliciously thrilling story, best read while lounging in the sun.
| Primary Genre | Modern and Contemporary Fiction |
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What if your perfect life was a charade?
It is August, and eight old friends have gathered at a country house for a writers' retreat. By day, there is reading beside the pool or writing in the shady corners of the estate. In the evenings – drinks, dinner outdoors, games, midnight swimming.
But as temperatures rise in the stifling last days of summer, tensions do too. Old jealousies, new temptations and bitter rivalries bubble to the surface. By the end of the week, friendships – and lives – will have changed forever.
Astute, witty and page-turning, The Book Game is a novel about ambition, competition, regret and desire; about paths not taken and last chances suddenly seized; about the games people play. It asks what it means, in all senses, to be in the middle of life.
The Book Game features in the following genres: Audiobooks of the Month, General Fiction, Modern and Contemporary Fiction, Thriller and Suspense, Narrative theme: Interior life, Narrative theme: Sense of place, Contemporary lifestyle fiction, Modern and Contemporary Fiction, Fiction, Contemporary lifestyle fiction, Fiction: narrative themes, Narrative theme: Interior life, Narrative theme: Sense of place
The Book Game is available in Paperback, Audiobook, Hardback
The Book Game was written by Frances Wise and published by Fourth Estate, HarperCollins
