An emotionally charged comedy of manners - supremely elegant and funny but also with the power to shake the reader's feelings. Luke is a young diplomat on his first overseas posting. He's in New York, preparing for the 50th anniversary of the United Nations. His photo has appeared in the New York Times. He has a knack for success. Then he witnesses a crime, the fallout from which threatens everything. His fainting spells return and he finds himself back in New Zealand, living on his sister's farm, caught up in another difficulty altogether, and involved in the life of a community whose personalities and rules of conduct he finds as bewitching and dizzying as anything experienced at the frontline of international diplomacy. By the end of his time there - which takes the reader only halfway through this novel - Luke has been asked the most testing questions about himself. In the second part of the book, these questions return with a new and surprising urgency. THE FAINTER is a superb novel, beautifully written, bracingly funny, rich with cutting insight and cool compassion.