Nicholas Spice writes:

To the other characters, Jamal likes to remain something of an enigma, but to the reader he is apparently an open book. Secrets, Auden says, are the currency of love. We share secrets to create our closest bonds. Affected by his quietness and his availability as a listener, people confide in Jamal, perhaps in the hope that if they tell him their secrets he will love them. Jamal, meanwhile, tells his secrets to the reader. This draws us close to him, a complicity that the novel never seeks to disturb by suggesting that, as its narrator, he might not always be reliable. Jamal may lie to the other characters in the story, but he never lies to us.

(LRB 10 April 2008)

Faber | hardback 345 pp. |ISBN: 9780571209774