Whatever Love Means [Paperback]

and dead the dead shall stay.

Novels about people having affairs, I often think, must have done more for the cause of celibacy and monogamy than the combined bulls and encyclicals of every Pope since Peter. I bought this one only on the strength of its authorship. David Baddiel is or used to be a comedian, of a quiet and intellectual kind. He specialised in insights and apercus, and anyone who specialises in those runs a constant risk of being a crashing bore. However Baddiel did them better than many, so I was hopeful, and in the event I found this story quite interesting even at the start, and absolutely riveting by the end.

Not surprisingly, this edition hypes the book as being set against the background of the death of Princess Diana. In fact that has very little bearing on the story, but Baddiel does not waste material, there is a very telling parallel towards the end, and of course the book's title quotes a notorious piece of crass insensitivity from the heir to the British throne towards his young and sensitive fiancée. How well does this title fit what happens in the following 300-odd pages? Myself, I'd say `quite well'. The torrid bits of the narrative are near the start, and the events never detach themselves from the emotional and sexual relationships among the four main players, but increasingly as the plot develops it turns into a rather interesting tease - who suspects whom and what? As I read it all, the author does not commit himself to answering the question of what love is, nor can I see any reason why he should. Quite apart from the grown-ups and their `adult' behaviour, there is a baby in this story and he is quite unquestionably loved. It is never so unquestionable among the adults, and in fact the actual word `love' does not seem to occur very often.

What seems to me good without any qualification is the storytelling technique. As the plot thickens, the cross-purposes dialogues with the participants uncertain what their interlocutors might be suggesting are very neatly done. The sub-plots are worked into the main narrative very skilfully I thought, and any unresolved suggestions are always picked up and answered, culminating in a genuine thunderbolt of a conclusion. I felt a twinge of suspicion that the final unravelling of the main mystery might have been not completely in keeping with the characterisation that had been very consistent up until then, with a slight hint of Poirot in the way it is explained. Even if I'm right about that, it is a small price to pay for such an original denouement, and I know that my own sense of involvement increased sharply in the last few chapters.

Baddiel is yer genuine deep thinker in the last resort. We get a bit from him about the contest between love and death - eros (more accurately passion) and thanatos -- and of course eros keeps ahead all the way until finally losing as he must. Of the four main dicers with these two fates one dies, one sails through totally unscathed, one I would definitely not have liked to be, and I don't know what to think regarding the fourth. The living are the living/And dead the dead shall stay. I'm not sure who finishes worst off, nor do I think I'm meant to be any the wiser as to what `love' means.

A clever book that's also funny in parts. But the behaviour of the main characters felt odd to me, implausible. And there was too much musing for my taste, too much apparent searching for universal truths in what could have been a straightforward, entertaining little story. An okay read. But Nick Hornby does this sort of stuff far better.

At first I chose to read this book because I knew the author as being a funny bloke on TV shows such as Baddiel and Skinner Unplanned and Fantasy World Cup, but this book is absolutely brilliant; serious but with light moments. On the day of Diana, Princess of Wales' death, Vic Mullan begins an affair with his best mate's wife, Emma Serena. An unforgettable book. (A+)

› Go to Amazon.com to see all 3 reviews  4.3 out of 5 stars