Reconciliation opens with an intriguing apology by the author ‘for the extent to which my characters fail to resemble their real-life models’. This indicates a central concern of Guy Ware’s novel: namely, how the fiction writer appropriates ‘facts’ to create a story. It’s a preoccupation that informs the book’s highly original narrative structure.

The first part of Reconciliation gives a taste of the sorts of slippages in time and mode with which the reader must contend. The book opens in February 2003, when Martin, the narrator, is in a testy relationship with Holly, an archivist working in Cambridge. The tensions between them worsen

Literary Review

Sep 2017

Categories

Tom Williams

Down and Out in Miami

Neanderthals Among Us

Marriage of Convenience

Happiness Is A Warm Gun

Plant Life

Identity Parade

Time After Time

A Town of Two Halves

Build It Up, Tear It Down

Life in the Big Smoke

Bertie’s Back

Speak, Memory

Sound & Fury

Here I Stand

What’s in a Name?

All You Need Is an Island

Sink or Swim

This Blessed Plot

Blast from the Past

Cabinet of Curiosities

A Day At The Races

Pilgrim’s Progress

After the Fall

Out of Eden Grove