Paperback, 368 pages
Published Oct. 3, 2017 by Graywolf Press.
Here are nine men. Each of them is at a different stage in life, each of them is away from home, and each of them is striving - in the suburbs of Prague, in an over-developed Alpine village, beside a Belgian motorway, in a crap Cypriot hotel - to understand just what it means to be alive, here and now. Vibrating with detail and intelligence, pathos and surprise, All That Man Is is a portrait of contemporary manhood, contemporary Europe and contemporary life from a British writer of supreme gifts - the master of a new kind of realism.
I gave up half way through. I just found it too depressing. I found it hard to sympathise with the characters, except in a vague 'aren't men hopeless?' kind of way. Perhaps my lack of perseverance is one of the failings the book depicts? In which case, I don't need reminding!
