Mark Sutton

And they are together –

in a way, because they're used to it.

It's not a relationship that we sense there's a huge amount of immediate passion in, certainly at this point in their lives.

And that's him being nice.

One of the great strengths of the book is Tom is a very flawed person, both in the way he's dealing with others and as that passage shows, even in his own thought processes.

And although the book is told from his perspective of,

I think the book charts a very fine line and successfully charts this line of making us understand the way that Tom is coming across to other people, despite the fact that we're not getting their perspectives and understanding the way in which Tom's perspective on events works.

may be a strange and obscure way of looking at the world.

And I think one of Tom's great weaknesses, and this ends up becoming a huge element in the plot, is he is non-confrontational to a fault.

And this non-confrontational nature of his...

throughout points in his life, and we do get flashbacks to other moments in their relationship, has caused a lot of problems and has sort of led Tom to this ennui, fugue state he's in.

And the setting of the book, which is mostly set in a resort in Bali, is a great setting for that kind of ennui to play out because when you go to a resort like that, although for a lot of people it's, you know, a happy experience, there's also that strange dreamlike state where...

You lose track of days, they flow into one, you fall asleep in the banana lounge by the pool after having, you know, a couple of mojitos and you wake up and you don't know what's going on and then you get back in the water and each day is just like the one before.

And that strange time is something that...

the book has going for it.

We're constantly being told Tom woke up the next morning and did this and we're thinking, hold on, but last time we saw him, it was also morning or they just had lunch.

And it's slightly not confusing, but you feel a little bit like time is slipping as you read it, which is quite interesting as it goes on.

And Tom and Clara's relationship, we begin to see that the frayed edges coming apart in this moment where they suddenly do have time to think about what

themselves, their relationship and what's going on outside of the regular stresses of life in Melbourne.

For people who are, I suppose you might say introverts like Clara and Tom, or at least not type A personalities, Madeline and Jeremy are more fun, but also in some ways more, well, at least in the way Tom portrays them, they're more simple.