Amanda Craig
Getting Pantis in a Twist
The Good, the Bad and the Little Bit Stupid
By Marina Lewycka
Fig Tree 261pp £14.99 order from our bookshop
This is the latest addition to the subgenre of ‘Brexlit’, or fiction inspired by Brexit. Marina Lewycka’s characters are a quartet whose actions are summed up by the words of the title. The gorgeous, septuagenarian George Pantis, whose Greek heritage was one of the factors that inspired him to vote Leave, his younger, left-wing wife, Rosie, their son, Sid (actually christened Poseidon), and George’s mistress, Brenda, are all caught up in a financial caper as ‘the immense shock that has been rattling the country’ reverberates through the family.
The story is told in short, punchy chapters from all four points of view. Although the author never stoops to even-handedness in the Brexit quarrel, the novel articulates some of the same tensions satirised by Jonathan Coe’s Middle England,
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