Everything about this book disturbed me.
The cover is bleak and threatening - managing to convey anger and violence. There are no page numbers. some pages only have a few words on them. Some pages have several words redacted and there is one section of over 5 pages where practically all the words are redacted.
Michael who has lost his job as the headmaster of a boys school, is grieving the loss of his wife in a terrorist attack on a London train. He holds a politician (name redacted) responsible for her death and plans revenge. The only people who he interacts with are his therapist, Angela, his estranged daughter, Amy, an ex-pupil, Paul, who lost his legs and half an arm in an explosion in Afghanistan and Frankie, whose wife has been missing since the train attack.
The story jumps about from the present time to the past and several interesting philosophical matters are explored. At times, I felt that I was enduring reading the book rather than enjoying it - when the storyline got bogged down with the technology of different types of rifle or computer programming.
However, I felt cheated when I got to the end of the book. All the things which the reader had assumed to be true were not and any sympathy which I had felt for Michael's circumstances and the consequences were undeserved.
This book has certainly kept me thinking long after I have finished reading it.
The cover is bleak and threatening - managing to convey anger and violence. There are no page numbers. some pages only have a few words on them. Some pages have several words redacted and there is one section of over 5 pages where practically all the words are redacted.
Michael who has lost his job as the headmaster of a boys school, is grieving the loss of his wife in a terrorist attack on a London train. He holds a politician (name redacted) responsible for her death and plans revenge. The only people who he interacts with are his therapist, Angela, his estranged daughter, Amy, an ex-pupil, Paul, who lost his legs and half an arm in an explosion in Afghanistan and Frankie, whose wife has been missing since the train attack.
The story jumps about from the present time to the past and several interesting philosophical matters are explored. At times, I felt that I was enduring reading the book rather than enjoying it - when the storyline got bogged down with the technology of different types of rifle or computer programming.
However, I felt cheated when I got to the end of the book. All the things which the reader had assumed to be true were not and any sympathy which I had felt for Michael's circumstances and the consequences were undeserved.
This book has certainly kept me thinking long after I have finished reading it.