Time Off (1999)

REVIEWS “An incredibly powerful and enchanting book. The structure is meticulous and elegant. Stillness and beauty dominate the style, vocabulary and narration in this outstanding novel.”

“In the character, the reader is allowed to see all those petty and laughable flaws which I think everyone possesses up to a certain point, but which are so ridiculous we don't want others to find out about them. For example, he spends an inordinate amount of time thinking about what other people are thinking about, spends quite a lot of time on long and detailed daydreams about what it would be like to know people he doesn't know, and he finds it hard to make simple decisions. He tells harmless lies to avoid seeing his family and wastes a lot of energy on getting out of doing things, but obviously ends up spending more time and energy on evasion and procrastination than would have been needed to simply carry out the action. But those petty, laughable points are at the centre of the protagonist and are really the theme of the book. And you're either laughing or squirming.”