`Here, with dead-pan Swiftian irony, Sisson traces the progress, or regress, of a lower-middle-class homme moyen sensuel impoverished by every material and spiritual loss that contemporary civilisation can inflict . . .' Spectator

`Certainly no one who cares about good writing can afford to ignore this book.' Guardian

`This "negative narration" is a striking technical achievement. It also has a powerful emotional effect, endowing Homm's arbitrary sufferings with the ineluctable logic of predestination.' The Times

Christopher Homm 'was a pattern of amiability when he fell flat on the gravel' - dead. This is his story, tracing him back through the estates, meat pies, love affairs and snickets of his life, including military service in India, to the ill-starred moment when Mr Homm climbed the stairs to look in on his wife, in whose womb Christopher 'crouched in his blindness'.

Published a quarter of a century before Time's Arrow, Sisson's dark comedy of reversals is told with what the Sunday Telegraph called 'incisive prose style and superbly sardonic wit.' The places share the reality of Sisson's own early years. The author's shoe soles were worn by the same pavements as Homm's, and he may from time to time have passed him in the street, with a vertiginous sense of recognition.