A big, clever, emotionally messy novel about obsession, class, sex, friendship, betrayal, and people trying to survive themselves.

At its centre is a man who cannot let go of a past relationship, but Perlman uses that fixation to pull half a dozen lives into collision: lawyers, teachers, therapists, children, ex-lovers, the professionally articulate and the privately deranged.

Perlman is excellent on the overlap between desire, class, self-mythology and damage; the book moves like a psychological thriller but has the reach of a proper social novel. Dense, funny, morally slippery, and far more gripping than the phrase “literary fiction” usually promises.

Signed first Australian edition. Picador, 2003. Paperback. Signed by Elliot Perlman on title page. Great condition.