Author Purpose, Tone and Intent — demo

Granted, home working hands people back the hours once lost to the commute. Parents, in particular, speak of finally eating supper with their children. Yet the newest staff, with no desk neighbour to ask, can drift into a quiet isolation. It is a gain worth keeping, provided no one is left to sink unseen.

One has to admire the sheer reach: a single family followed across a hundred years. Here and there a sentence stops you, lovely enough to read twice. But the threads tangle, and by the last third even the author seems unsure who is who. It is a brave book that does not, in the end, quite work.

At last the law bans the flimsiest single-use plastics, and not before time. Yet it says nothing about the mountains of packaging that fill every weekly bin. And the ban does not bite, astonishingly, for another three years. A real step, then — but a short one, and overdue at that.

It is easy to see the appeal: the best of them are as gripping as any thriller. But behind each twist is a real family, whose worst day becomes our commute soundtrack. It is uncomfortably easy to forget that none of this was written to amuse us. I listen too, and wince a little each time I do.