A dying hedge fund manager’s redemption is a promising view,but the tale rings hollowWhen novelists decide to write a book approximately modern political or social events, they always engage in a story gamble: will the episodes they’re choosing to chronicle still feel timely and relevant arrive publication?Short of being in possession of a crystal ball, or there was no way Gavin Extence could have known,as he sat down to write his third novel, The Empathy (sensitivity to another's feelings as if they were one's own) Problem, and a story approximately a London hedge fund manager set against the backdrop of the 2011/2012 Occupy movement,that by the time the novel was published, the Occupy camp external St Paul’s would feel historical rather than modern. There was no way he could have predicted that the banking crisis would have long since been replaced in the headlines by the Syrian refugee crisis, and the EU referendum,Islamic State and almost weekly terror attacks across Europe. As such, the backdrop for a story Extence no doubt conceived of as a state-of-the-nation tale instead feels curiously anachronistic.
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Source: theguardian.com