Skios, by Michael Frayn

Skios

Author: Michael Frayn

ISBN-13: 978-0571281459

Publisher: Faber and Faber

Guideline Price: Sterling7.99

Frayn, now in his 80th year, has written deeply serious novels and plays, screenplays, translations of Chekhov and even an opera, but he is probably best known as creator of the hugely successful stage farce Noises Off . Skios is a return to this genre, and it is as much an audacious assemblage of the basic elements of farce as a novel. It opens with a classic mistaken-identity situation that is completely implausible in the age of Google: Oliver Fox, a handsome young adventurer arriving on a Greek island for a romantic liaison about which he has had second thoughts , responds on a whim to a greeter holding up a card that reads "Dr Norman Wilfred" and, high on risk addiction, is taken off to deliver a lecture on scientific economics the next day to a distinguished international audience. Meanwhile, the real Dr Wilfred – older, balder, portlier – is in the luggage hall, sweatily searching for his lost suitcase. How Fox maintains the deception , and the real academic's bewildering adventures on the island (inevitably, he bumbles into Fox's intended love nest), result in many extremely funny sequences, but the stitching together of coincidence and misunderstanding eventually becomes tiresome as the author somewhat condescendingly toys with his reader. It's still enjoyable , though; Frayn couldn't write a dull book.