The Men's Club is a provocative title that seems to herald male chauvinism's answer to The Women's Room and novels of that genre; a firing of defensive salvoes, perhaps, or even a counter-attack claiming that the problems caused by negative discrimination are nothing to those engendered by the positive variety. But in fact, for all its surface liveliness, Michael's novel turns out to have little to add to the increasingly lacklustre debate on sexual politics; its effect is merely to corroborate traditional views of the male and female character (female = nuturing, male = aggressive), despite a hint of tables being turned (almost literally; a dresser is crashed to the floor by an irate wife) in the final pages.

Michaels writes a choppy, muscle-flexing prose, intending, perhaps, to express an ironical stance towards the Maileresque style of literary tough-talking. Having accustomed oneself to nouns lopped of their articles and full-stops...