Very nice!
A truly original book, written with a very captivating and ironic style. The author was able to write a "noir" book that intrigues you and pushes you to see how it ends, and at the same time creates an atmosphere of irony and humor that makes reading very pleasant. It's certainly not a masterpiece of literature, but at least it makes you have some fun hours and above all it doesn't need to put lies on the back cover to make you believe what it isn't.
In fact, if you take this book for what it is, that is, if you are not looking for a noir in the classic sense of the word, then all the characters take on a meaning that they otherwise wouldn't have. They are unlikely characters, of course, but the whole book has no desire to seem plausible and therefore the whole plot takes on that hint of surreality that I like so much. Then Gary, Grace, Emily and the other protagonists take on a very particular credibility within the plot, and everything returns to its place.
It's very British comedy, of course, and therefore not everyone likes it, but it's certainly intelligent, non-trivial comedy.
And Gary, the protagonist, is not banal either, even if he doesn't have any interesting characteristics: thirty years old, friendless, assistant at a dilapidated law firm, he dresses anonymously and lives alone in a squalid apartment. And his neighbor, Grace, a disheveled old lady like few others, is not banal. And what about Emily, the girl of the pub, who is also definitely strange?
I also talked about the writing style: I liked it because it's Gary and Emily, in almost alternating chapters, talking about themselves, their troubles, their failures and their dreams; it's certainly not a very original idea, but it's really well played here.
There is a corpse, ok, but in this very strange noir it is really the last thing that remains in the reader's mind. Three stars well deserved.