Few writers think and talk so beguilingly. This book is wonderfully funny. And intelligent. And moving
Independent on Sunday
Quicksilver clever and allusive
The Times
Scintillating... It's funny, quick on the draw, and knows when to soften the gaze. It reads so smoothly, the pages seem to flip themselves
Observer
A writer of rare intelligence. He catches the detail of contemporary life with an uncanny forensic skill... He is, as always, a superb ironist, a connoisseur of middling, muddling, modern England
London Review of Books
A wonderfully wistful and funny novel
Daily Telegraph
The author is not merely a dazzling entertainer, he is a no-nonsense moralist as well, and is as dextrous with the darker elements of betrayal and pain as with the farcical mechanics of love and clashing temperament
New Yorker
From the winner of the 2011 Man Booker Prize for Fiction comes a novel of profound insight and comic flare.
Shy, sensible banker Stuart has trouble with women; that is, until a fortuitous singles night, where he meets Gillian, a picture restorer recovering from a destructive affair. Stuart's best friend Oliver is his complete opposite - a language teacher who 'talks like a dictionary', brash and feckless. Soon Stuart and Gillian are married, but it is not long before a tentative friendship between the three evolves into something far different.
Talking it Over is a brilliant and intimate account of love's vicissitudes. It begins as a comedy of errors, then slowly darkens and deepens, drawing us compellingly into the quagmires of the heart.