The Book Game

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“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.

Reviewed by Joanne Owen
Joanne Owen’s lifelong love of reading and writing began when she was growing up in Pembrokeshire, and very much wished that witches (and Mrs Pepperpot) were real.
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