You either know or you don't. I'm not the one who tells you.

If you have somehow got this far in life without knowing, then get off the internet, buy it, and read it over a weekend. I will not be the leak.

Came back to this in July and it's the back half that keeps shifting on me. The front half is machine-tooled and does exactly what it sets out to do, beat by beat. The back half is a different book with a different engine underneath it, and the first time round I felt slightly cheated, and now I think it's the more interesting of the two. Not better. More interesting.

His chapters I skim now; hers I still read every word of.

The bit everybody argues about at the end: my sister calls it a cop-out, I say it's the only place it could possibly land, and we have now had that argument at three separate Christmases and once at a wedding.

Eight rather than nine because the middle third sags and there's a run of chapters in Missouri where I caught myself checking how much was left.