I've just finished reading Lionel Shriver's 'So Much For That'. Getting older, and working in publishing has made me far less likely to fall in love with an author and track down their other books. I'm not sure exactly why, perhaps firstly because the older I am the more I'm aware that I've got plenty of time to do that so somehow end up doing something else, something easier, and maybe secondly simply because when you have to read an absolute minimum of four manuscripts a week, it doesn't leave you as much time or energy to develop other obsessions. However, Lionel Shriver has been an exception, ever since I picked up 'We Need To Talk About Kevin' and became fixated by her bald, beautiful prose and her almost unhealthy revelling in the darker, shameful side of people.

So Much For That is an exhausting book (if less spiritually annihilating than the lethal 'Double Fault'). Watching Shep (her unusually good hearted and morally straight forward hero) dealing with the slow death of his wife through cancer was hard enough, but much more difficult was her beginning every chapter charting the painful dribbling away of Shep's bank balance, his 'Afterlife' money until the fantastic, uplifting ending. In spite of their eventual escape to Pemba (pause to google it and see if it's as good as it sounded... ). Have ended it incredibly glad that I live in England. Let's be honest, our country is just better. Although having now accidentally watched ten minutes of 'The Only Way Is Essex' I am suddenly concerned that we don't have long left as a nation, and that maybe that's a good thing. Either way, I must remember that the NHS is a wonderful, wonderful thing.

In other news, I went last night to see The Emperor and Gallilean, which is an Ibsen play that's never been performed. In its original state, it is seven and a half hours long, which is the ostensible reason for this unusual neglect. However, having now seen it in its new incarnation of a mere four hours, I conclude that it's never been performed because it is (whisper it for fear of enraging the critics) not very good. It was a very strange, unwieldy thing. Great production, absolutely amazing set (if somewhat overdone at times and given to making leaden parallels with modern times), really good actors, however none of these things managed to distract the audience from realising that Ibsen had some managed to take seven and a half hours to say: 1) paganism and Christianity are both religions and so actually a bit similar if you think about it, and 2) Killing people is always wrong, even if you pretend it's because of God(s). Could maybe see that when it was written, these were more shocking ideas, but still struggle with him needing quite so long to hammer them in. Was a bit like being beaten over the head with a blunt, patronising, anti-religious relic. Not that that has happened to me, but I'm guessing.

Fish is back. As keeps happening recently, we are very sweet to each other from a distance and then end up annoyed with each other within moments of being in the same room. *sigh. Relationships are tricky.