Who would choose to live in a novel by Angus Wilson? His characters are constantly exposed to the cruel publicity of society: everyone finds himself involuntarily, often unwittingly, on show. He may ache for silence and privacy, yearn to cultivate his inner life like a secret garden, but here the most retiring and insignificant people are condemned to be public figures…. Husbands and wives, parents and children, discover that there is nothing more demandingly public than private life. They have to learn to be actors, with the actor's conscious, uneasy control of character and expression. Failure here is dreadfully easy: a small solecism mushrooms into a humiliating disaster; what starts as a polite giggle ends as a shriek. The lights are always on, there are no corners to hide in.

Either we conduct ourselves honourably in these terrible games, or we go mad or die. Death happens here...