Knut Hansen - I have some old PAN copies of his books ever since Doris Lessing said that he may well have made some wrong choices (Nazi sympathiser, gave his Nobel medal to Goering apparently, so a bit more than just a vague fellow traveller), but that didn't detract from his abilities as a writer. Fair enough - I mean I still like P.G.Wodehouse without agreeing or being happy about his Fascist sympathies. But Mysteries gradually becomes less and less readable as it's fucked up and more and more unpleasant hero indulges in drunken tirades, poisons the object of his love's dog (well it did bite him) and generally behaves in a very unsociable manner. Also in a less and less readable manner - you get tired of his anti social outbursts, his ravings. You don't get any insight into his inner musings, only a third person narration of what he does and says and dreams. He's compared with Dostoyevsky, but he lacks Dostoyevsky's sense of inner truth and realism, his sense of meaning.
I've been searching for a summary of the book so I don't have to read it all - not that I believe anything much will happen. There is no time to read it, given the mountain of unread books that grows week by week. I just want a sense of closure!
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