I discovered this brilliant novel very recently and only by chance and I was completely gripped by it. Usually I dislike a novel that has numerous characters through whose eyes the story is seen because it can be a lazy method of conveying a narrative, but in this case the way it moves from one character to another is very well done and makes the narrative gloriously unpredictable. It’s hard to describe the novel because it covers so many subjects but at the heart is the 2008 crash and a financial scandal which has repercussions for many people. I think that’s one of the central themes: how an event like that affects a large number of people in numerous different ways. But that makes it sound as if it’s a rather unoriginal financial thriller, but it’s not that at all. The author is very concerned with moral choice and the difficulty of doing the right thing in a complex situation. Almost everyone in the novel makes choices that pose a conundrum for the reader. Essentially the novel explores questions of guilt and responsibility and evokes a situation in which people know that evil actions are being carried out but find ways to close their eyes to the truth as long as they are gaining a benefit. (I think we can all see how that works in politics as well as finance.) The characters are vividly brought to life and the many places where the action unfolds are evoked very convincingly.

The structure is brilliant with different sections in different time-frames that the reader pieces together: The crucial message that at the beginning of the novel is written in acid on the huge glass window of a hotel in northern British Columbia, is finally explained only very close to the end.