No great searing insights into the human condition, but very very funny in places and quite poignant in others. Challenged verisimilitude in one or two places, I thought. If Alice is a college babe adored by a posse of rugger-buggers, how likely is it (that she would invite our hero home for the first vac, and over New Year at that?? I knew plenty of Alices... and the idea of my spending new Year with any of them would have been in the realms of fantasy!
And the likelihood of Julian the Researcher being so clumsy with the envelope of questions does not so much stretch credulity as deform its physical shape out of all existence.
Good fun though - a very entertaining read. His second, "The Understudy" is quite good, although I found myself thumping the page and saying "oh, come ON" a lot.