"Glimpse them chatting in a restaurant or posing on Instagram, and you might think they have it all. The pair live in London but often travel, drawing the eyes of other guests, their skin glowing, their limbs artfully at ease. She writes affirmations on hotel stationery; he claims to taste notes of bark and tobacco in his chianti. As Sean Gilbert's dark, observant debut opens in Istanbul, this apparently perfect couple bicker and sweat, for secrets lurk behind their facade and one of them might be murder."
"In exam season in his third year, Raph is found dead in a punt on the Cam from an apparent overdose, a bottle of Puligny-Montrachet in his right hand, a rotting picnic at his feet and a recording of Titus Andronicus blasting from a speaker. The narrator is keen to get shot of Benny, but Elle is strangely reluctant to ditch him and the three end up on an excursion to a lonely Anatolian hostel, where gap year students strut their stuff and the tension becomes overwhelming."
"An irksome university acquaintance who has become a second-rate rapper, Benny has the grip of a limpet. As the trio browse stalls and pull on saliva-slicked shishas, talk turns to the past. Gilbert intersperses his Istanbul chapters with flashbacks to their university years at Cambridge, where we see the three in the orbit of charismatic cad Raph, who shines at the debating society. Elle goes out with him and is betrayed. The narrator pretends indifference, but watches him like a hawk. Benny lusts after Raph, but tells himself he couldn't possibly be gay."
The unnamed narrator and his wife, Elle, appear enviable as they travel from London, but simmering tensions and hidden histories surface during a reunion in Istanbul. They unexpectedly meet Benny, an intrusive former acquaintance who clings to them, and stroll the city while past university events resurface. Flashbacks show three friends at Cambridge orbiting charismatic Raph; Elle dates Raph and is betrayed. Raph later turns up dead in a punt on the Cam with wine, a rotting picnic and loud music. The couple's marriage strains under trauma—sex tape, social-media fallout, bereavement—and speculative, violent fantasies raise questions about culpability and possible murder.
Read at www.theguardian.com
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