Robert Lukens

Apparently it's okay if your girlfriend likes them too, I think.

I see.

And, you know, I have to confess quite early on, I've read this book two and a half times.

Only because I had a very strong reaction to this novel and I found it very difficult to connect to this novel.

You're being polite.

You mean you didn't like it?

I didn't like it because I couldn't connect with so much of this story.

I think there's two main things.

And the reason I read it two and a half times is because I was trying to drill down to why I had a very strong reaction to this novel.

There's the simple matter of I didn't gel with the comedy.

I actually got to the point where every time I could see in the corner of my eye a slab of dialogue coming, I had to kind of steel myself.

that we had to get through this.

That was just, to me, and maybe it's a question... And that's a question of taste when it comes to comedy.

I didn't get into the gel of that relationship.

Not necessarily.

I think...

It's all on the table.

I think there's no reason why these incredibly big, as we discussed before, such complicated things to get your head around, the Bosnian War, which was a localised apocalypse for these people involved, suicide and the repercussions of that, I don't see any reason why that can't be integrated into a comedy, as strange as that might seem.

But I think if you're going to attempt to do that, two things.

Boy, it had better be funny.