Sean Dixon's first UK review

[4 (out of 5) stars]

This novel about an unusual book club was released just a little too late to make Richard and Judy's list of summer reads, but it's the novel that everyone will be talking about in a few weeks' time. The Lacuna Cabal is an idiosyncratic book club -- and not just because of its name. Its members meet in locations appropriate to the book being discussed (but rarely read), kidnap the authors they are fond of and re-enact their favourite passages. But the Cabal's days are numbered. The death of a members has led the all-female self-appointed 'premier reading club of the English-speaking world' to up its game -- accepting men as members. Author Sean Dixon was originally a playwright and it shows. The novel's footnotes often read like stage directions and the characters have more depth than in any book you're likely to read for a long time. The most impressive thing about Dixon's story is that the fiction is all rooted in fact. The books and blogs he references are really exist, offering further reading for after the novel is finished -- the author's own blog for a start. Voted one of the 15 best books in Canada in 2007, it's taken a year and a name change (it used to be called The Girls Who Saw Everything) for this to cross the pond. But it will take a lot longer for readers to forget.