Forty-Seventeen

The story of a forty year old man who has an affair with a seventeen year old girl (and all sorts of other, odd, adventures) is classic Moorhouse: hilariously funny, carefully observed, very smart about politics (human and international), and a little off-kilter in terms of narrative. It also contains one of Moorhouse's great "lists": in this case, a list of things every man should know by age forty.

Frank Morehouse hides this gem of a book behind a difficult first chapter. Morehouse's uses what he calls discontinuous narrative style, where he presents the novel as a series of inter-related short stories, to great effect. Like The American's Baby, we get to know (and like) the characters we see from one perspective, only to have those images torn to shreds by stories from different times, different people's view etc. Forty-seventeen is the story of a middle-aged man and his affair with a seventeen-year-old girl. As the lives of the couple are built up by strangely juxtaposed stories, Morehouse exposes the charades we play when we present different views of ourselves to other people. Morehouse is skilled in writing sexy prose that, once you get through the first chapter, you'll find hard to stop reading. A thoroughly enjoyable book.