Reluctantly, as I hate doing this, I am abandoning this almost halfway through.
It is quite different from what I expected — a beautifully written, very long novel about—interalia—youngish middle-aged couples experimenting with affairs and an element of wife swapping, in the early 1960s. However, it is also very ponderously about a great deal else, a mixture of trivial events and contemporary middle-class thinking.
It is the lack of any plotting that is the killer for me — these people just fanny around, meet each other at parties, occasionally have affairs, but so what — there is a complete absence or vacuity of any narrative drive going anywhere.
Or that is my take on it — I might re-read it on holiday and see if I can make any more of it.
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