O'Farrell's follow-up to her much-acclaimed debut, After You'd Gone, starts promisingly, like a sassed-up Rebecca, but halfway through slumps into a dumb soap of lies, stalking and infidelity. O'Farrell has a nice way with metaphor - Marcus's smile "shrivels like burning paper", "Lily's grazed hands "feel sensitised, peeled like eggs". But she overindulges it, and what wants to be a lyrical study of modern relationships winds up as jumped-up chick-lit without the jokes.