In the beginning I thought this book was fabulous, fast moving, intriguing and full of interesting characters. The first chapter follows a hot air ballooning accident as if in slow motion and I loved the set up here. But then the rest of the book kept going downhill. Nothing lived up to the first chapter. In many ways the book has the same trappings as a thriller - a mad character stalking a sane character while everyone thinks the sane character is going insane - and maybe this thrillerness led me astray from a decent piece of literary fiction.

I certainly didn’t hate it but I expect to finish McEwan’s books feeling impressed all round rather than with a vague sense that the story was interesting but just okay and feeling like I missed the point.