Spin on this.

The archly titled Politics is, in fact, about sex. Or, to be more precise, postmodern sexual etiquette. It’s a comedy of manners to make Jane Austen’s eyes water. It’s also a tangential meditation on everything from shopping to Stalin which nods longingly towards Milan Kundera.

The novel’s characters, despite their uncertainties in the sack, share with Thirlwell the kind of boho precocity that will inevitably split readers down the middle, depending on whether they carry a copy of Rimbaud in their army surplus shoulder bags. Moshe, an actor, and his girlfriend Nana, an MA student, become involved in a very sticky (is there any other kind?) ménage à trois with actress Anjali. It’s for the reader/voyeur to watch how they get on.

Politics is a deliberately unsexy book about human vulnerability, which is at its most heightened when sex loses its unconsciousness. And, as such, Thirlwell makes a good fist (in all its meanings) of it. (6/10) Michael Williams 29 August 03

Politics by Adam Thirlwell is out now, published by Jonathan Cape.