SOURCE: Reading, Peter. “Open to Question.” Times Literary Supplement, no. 4665 (28 August 1992): 17.

In the following review, Reading offers a positive assessment of Now You Know, calling the novel witty and entertaining.

It will surprise no one to learn that Michael Frayn's new novel, Now You Know, is workmanlike, entertaining, perspicacious, funny and gently satirical. It is the uncomplicated (even lightweight) story of a few weeks in the life of OPEN, a freedom-of-information lobby, and the ironic gulf between this organization's aims (exposing governmental evasiveness in public issues) and the clandestine machinations of the individuals who make up its workforce.

OPEN's office is on the third floor of a scruffy building situated between the Strand and the Thames, “behind the wine warehouse, past all the black garbage bags”. The front doorstep is occupied each night by two female dossers in a cardboard box. The hero of the novel and the...