Tim O'Brien's seventh book comes garlanded with the sort of terrifying ropes of adjectives - "savage . . . picaresque . . . ingenious" - which give the wary reader pause. Can it really be that funny, for goodness' sake? Actually, it is. Veterans of O'Brien's Vietnam books If I Die In A Combat Zone and Going After Cacciato will know what to expect - a skewed world-view and black, bleak humour - but in creating this new anti-hero, linguistics professor Thomas Chippering, the old campaigner has outdone himself. With his serial flirting and boundless self-delusion, Chippering is unspeakably ghastly, and O'Brien's deftly persuasive narrative will have you chortling aloud, like - if such can be imagined - a thinking person's Men Behaving Badly.
