I was given this book through a Goodreads giveaway.

For the first few chapters this book drove me nuts. I hated all those darned footnotes and asterisks. I hated the constant repetition of the term "Terms and Conditions" in the chapter heading. I thought that I would be reading this book with my teeth clenched throughout.

In the end I lightened up and did what the book warns against: I ignored them. It proved to be an easy read thereafter although still somewhat contrived. I didn't find the book funny - perhaps some things were too close to the truth for me (I guess I'd describe the book as containing many truisms).

I don't have my copy to hand but I seem to remember the book being compared to Salmon Fishing in the Yemen and having read both I would totally agree with this.

Oh and I really did expect more from the main character...
( )

For if the devil's in the detail, I'm the devil's ghost-writer, typing cautionary tales in font so small they're rendered invisible. You can barely see them and when you do it's too late.

I have been wanting to read this book for a little while. This is one of those books that I knew I would love even before I started reading it. When I finished it I was mad at myself that I hadn't read it sooner.

Frank is a lawyer whose job it is to write terms and conditions for all kinds of contracts. Frank gets into a car crash and after the crash gets amnesia. This book shows you just how Frank deals with his amnesia and all the many terms and conditions of his life.

I really liked Frank right from the start of the book. I just loved his sense of humor. Frank is as clueless about his life as readers are in the beginning. I felt bad for him that he couldn't remember anything and because it seemed like something had happened that no one was telling him about. Once he started to remember everything that had happened I liked him even more.

I felt this book had great secondary characters as well. Whether I loved or hated a character, I still found myself wanting to read about them. I especially loved Doug and Malcolm, but maybe that is because they were the nicest to Frank.

I don't want to spoil anything for anyone wanting to read this but I wasn't really shocked with what was revealed when Frank started remembering everything. It was a bit predictable (but that didn't stop me from enjoying it). I was very pleased with where Frank ended up at the end. I didn't want the book to end but since it had to end, that was a really good ending. ( )

I was about to give up on this about a quarter of the way through - interesting but there was something missing. However, in the end, I quite it.

The book is narrated by Frank who is initially recovering from a major car crash and can remember nothing about his life. It turns out that he is a corporate lawyer who writes the fine print (Terms and Conditions) in contracts. As he recovers, he finds himself re-evaluating his life. So far, so conventional, and for the first 50 pages or more I struggled a bit because I found it little more than a faintly amusing polemic against things like modern corporate-speak and the self-obsession, vacuity and insincerity of much of corporate life (and a good deal of life outside corporations).
The book is written like an academic paper, with footnotes on each page adding comments to Frank’s thoughts in the text above. At first this is amusing but, as the book progresses, it becomes distracting. This is especially so when the author just gives you these added thoughts in the same paragraph - why not that all the way through? I think the footnote idea is a gimmick and adds nothing to the novel - it is just there to add to the "terms and conditions" idea.
Take away the gimmick and you have a story with some quite witty moments, as well as many moments of true pathos.
Frank narrates self-deprecatingly with an appealing wry tone. The comedy is dark and delicious, satirical too, endlessly poking at the legal profession, corporate speak, the pointlessness of ambition, the nine to five; money, fame and power and all the Gods his supposed loved ones worship most. There are parts that will stick with me like the description of an office carpet ‘so fluffy his shoes end up looking as though he has kicked a Muppet to death’.
Everybody has skimmed or entirely skipped reading terms and conditions when signing up to things in the past. After reading this, though, I’m convinced it is always best to read the small print! ( )

“My name is Frank Shaw and I write contracts for a living. I'm not proud of what I do. In my bleaker moments I believe I'm the death of an essential part of humanity.”

Poor ol' Frank. He awakes from a car crash with amnesia only to find that everyone tells him everything is going to be fine, but no one will tell him the truth. So he has to find out who he is, and the finding is not always fun or pretty. Does he really love this woman who claims to be his wife?

This book is clever. It is filled with footnotes, those bothersome things that, like the fine print Frank spends his life writing, are usually ignored. There are footnotes to the footnotes, and footnotes to those and.... Don't ignore any of them – the crux of the story often lies in them. The font of the footnotes, as in his contracts, get tinier and tinier. Every chapter has the heading, “Terms & Conditions of...” something. Terms and conditions rule Frank's life.

Frank is a very unreliable narrator, partly because he is incapable of being a reliable one. But the fine print doesn't lie.

Despite his messed up life, his career, his failure to live his true life, I really, really liked the guy. I wanted to know what happens next. But you'd think a smart guy like Frank, even if he makes poor personal decisions, would know the difference between subjective and objective nouns and pronouns. He apparently doesn't. Come on, Frank, learn when it whould be “I” and when it should be “me.”

This book is quick to read and kept me interested and involved throughout. It's a feel-good book that is witty and fun and bares the soul of a basically good man.

I was given a copy of this book for review. ( )

Forgetting can be funny

Terms & Conditions: A Novel* by Robert Glancy (Bloomsbury USA, $26).

In general, when the main character of a novel has amnesia, the book will be a tragedy, a melodrama, or something that belongs on the Lifetime Network.

Frank Shaw wakes up in a hospital with a traumatic head injury and a case of near-total amnesia. He can remember his law—he’s a specialist in that part of contract law from which the novel takes its title, also known as “the fine print that always screws you over”—but he doesn’t remember the people in his life or how he feels about them.

It doesn’t sound all that funny, but as Frank begins to reconstruct his life—and discovers that he was kind of an asshole—he also uncovers some facts about the people around him that he doesn’t much care for, as well as some new uses for that contractual language that’s his specialty.

Throughout, though, author Robert Glancy has left us will all sorts of fine print—the terms and conditions of Frank’s life, if you will—that highlight just how smart he is as he skewers the hypocrisy, dishonesty, selfishness, etc. of which people are guilty.

As Frank flexes his contract muscles and becomes a better man, his respect for the fine print makes it possible to deliver a comeuppance or two. This is, truly, a very funny book; Glancy’s gift is all in the tone and in wise use of the novels controlling metaphor.

Reviewed at Lit/Rant: www.litrant.tumblr.com ( )