thought it was technically absolutely flawless. This book, I thought the writing was so fine. He doesn't use punctuation. He doesn't use speech marks. He doesn't use paragraph breaks. And when I was looking to see what people have been saying about it, that's something that seems to have tripped up a lot of people but I didn't find that in any way a problem or a barrier. It reads so smoothly because I think it is written with such skill and I think that really shows I found it almost unbearable to read. And here's why I wanted to read a little bit. So Eilish is trying to get her children ready and get them off to school. This is relatively early in the book, Eilish clicks the child seat into the car and asks Molly to wait with Ben. She steps inside and stands in the hall calling for Bailey turns and sees herself true in the mirror. The pale and rattled face given to the sunken eyes, the eyes asking the question and almost laughing at it mirror a mirror on the wall. For an instant she sees the past held in the open gaze of the mirror, as though the mirror contains all it has seen seeing herself sleepwalking before the glass the mindless comings and goings throughout the years, watching herself ushered the children out to the car. And there they are all ages before her and Mark has lost another shoe. And Molly is refusing to wear a coat. And Larry is asking if they have their school bags, and she sees how happiness hides in the humdrum, how it abides, and the everyday tooing and froing as though happiness were a thing that should not be seen as though it were a note that cannot be heard until it sounds from the past. Seeing her own countless reflections vain and satisfied before the glass while Larry waits impatiently in the car. He is standing in the hall, taking off his raincoat is shouting for his slippers as he slides out of his green boots. And this thing about happiness in the 100 I mean, this is my life. This character, the children, the family life, the domesticity juggling a job. Obviously, my particular situation parallel this very Exactly. But I think that is the thing about this book is that he's taking this nightmare scenario, and bringing it to a situation that we all recognise and inhabit. And it's absolutely terrifying. This idea So with I think, as he said, two or three governments away from some kind of authoritarian regime taking over, and how would we react and how we would do so and, and so this to me was an anxiety dream, come to life. And I really resented it, I have to say, I was absolutely devastated by it. I found it so difficult to read, I will be haunted by it for the rest of my days. I think the question at the end that really stuck with me is Was it worth it? He said in an interview that the inspiration that lay behind it was the two year old boy who died, the refugee was washed up on the Turkish Beach, which shocked the whole of Europe when the picture was published, and really made us all think quite hard about that situation, but at the same time with a sense of helplessness and disquiet. And all of that is embedded in this book. And at the end, I thought, What is the message here? It's so awful. And despairing. I didn't feel like it left me anyway useful. And I think just to go back to the Paul Murray, that was the difference between the two books, was that Paul Murray is also tackling things that seem impossible, and which might make us feel despairing and hopeless. But he was at least offering a possibility for change and hope, in a way that this book is so bleak, and so despairing. And yet I thought it was so good. So I don't know what to do with all these feelings. Phil, how about you?