The Blue Book Book

There's a lot of lost love and a fair few numbers in A L Kennedy's new novel The Blue Book. Arthur and Beth have a shifty shared past as fake mediums gathering clumps of the bereft together in church halls bringing therapeutic messages across from the Other Side. ; ; They also have a deranged undomesticated sexual history that has outlasted their professional association Arthur having gone solo in recent years. In a mise-en-scène straight out of a Noël Coward play they are reacquainted on a cruise ship where Beth now Elizabeth has brought her stooge of a boyfriend Derek after a series of misunderstandings. A rough crossing is promised and duly supplied. ; ; Over the coming days Derek will languish in his cabin stricken with seasickness for longer than strictly necessary; while Elizabeth will inevitably gravitate towards Arthur pallidly ensconced in the Astoria Suite. There will be many flashbacks a few abortive trips to the buffet a gathering sense of an inevitable realignment in the kettled triad's affairs a final tragic revelation. ; ; So much for the plot. The argument of the book is about the implacable despotic sovereignty of love as impossible as love can often seem; about how love is a private language a set of codes to which the outside world ought not admit impediment; about the rightness of doing wrong by false love when true love is waiting down the companionway. ;