Flip through the latest issue of Gulf Weekly.
BOOK OF THE WEEK with Linda Jennings. Terms & Conditions, Robert Glancy, ISBN 9781408852217 - Bloomsbury. BD6.800 for Gulf Weekly Book Club members
Terms and Conditions* is a highly original, very funny yet profound book about corporate morals and accountability narrated by Frank Shaw, a lawyer losing his grip on reality and swimming against the tide of his own life.
It has an excellent ending** but to start at the beginning, Frank has a car accident***. The doctor tells him he has lost his spleen, but Frank believes he has lost a lot more than that.
He is missing memories – of his brothers, his wife, his work in the family law firm and also how he came to be in the crash. All he remembers is that he is a rather serious lawyer specialising in writing the fine print (Terms and Conditions) in contractual documents.
Now, it is quite a blessing to begin with that Frank can’t remember how dire his life with Alice his wife was. A power-driven psychometrist who, forever firing multiple choice questions at him, then used his responses to write a book, Executive X on the type of man a company should not employ.
Things were no better at work as his older brother Oscar, who was bequeathed the position of senior partner in ‘Shaw & Sons’ when their father died, does all he can to keep Frank in his place (i.e. out of the boardroom).
However, with the help of some friends and his younger brother Malcolm, Frank starts to piece together his past life (which as you can see is not a pretty one) and in the process of unravelling the knots into which his corporate and private life has been tied, realises that all is not as it should be and things need to change.
This is a stunning debut novel and I am sure we will hear a lot more from and about Robert Glancy in the future.
* the title of the book
** which I am not going to reveal
*** apparently a rather serious one
* Read it now in paperback
The Girl Who Saved The King Of Sweden (Jonas Jonasson) 4TH Estate, ISBN 9780007557905. BD5 for Gulf Weekly Book Club members.
When Nombeko, a cleaner, was run over by a drunken engineer her luck changed. Alive, but blamed for the accident, she was made to work for the engineer – who happened to be in charge of a project vital to South Africa’s security until he made a big mistake.
Only Nombeko knows about it and is on the run from the world’s most ruthless secret service – with three Chinese sisters, twins who are officially one person and an elderly potato farmer. Oh, and the fate of the King of Sweden – and the world – rests on her shoulders. This is an entrancing hilarious tale of luck, love and international relations.
* My favourite read-of-the-week
Secrets of the Lighthouse (Santa Montefiore) Simon & Schuster, 9781471100970. BD4.500 for Gulf Weekly Book Club members.
If you like well written, romantic fiction then you should definitely give Santa Montefiore’s novels a try. Akin to Rosamunde Pilcher and Joanne Harris, her stories sweep effortlessly across generations and continents, with rich characters and elegant flowing prose.
This plot is an interesting blend of romance and ghosts, which opens with Caitlin watching her own funeral and moves on to the arrival of Ellen Trawton who has run away to Ireland from her demanding life in London (and equally demanding mother). As the story deepens, Ellen soon realises that there is more to her family history in Ireland than she had bargained for. A well thought out and gentle read – perfect for the pool!
