Trying to be Daddy's girl

Two-hundred-and-fifty pages in the company of Mark, the man at the centre of Henry Sutton's new novel, is a draining experience, such is the turmoil inside his head when, ten years after his ex-wife runs away with his daughter, she calls to say he should be a part of the girl's life.

But what makes this book unrewarding is the fact that nothing is explained. We want to know certain things as surely as Mark would want to know them. And, in the same way, characters aren't explained or logical. Sutton has an annoying habit of skipping events, and his rambling sentences confuse rather than clarify.