Thirlwell's comedy of manners, in which the humiliations and absurdisms of sex are brilliantly played out with an excruciating commitment to realism, is so self-consciously pleased with itself that the reader is plunged into a constant conflict of frustration, irritation and fascination.
It's achingly contemporary, too: as three North London twentysomethings clumsily embark on a menage a trois, Thirlwell sends up the neuroses of the age while acknowledging, equally playfully, the literary influences of Milan Kundera and Gustave Flaubert. An admirable triumph of style over substance.