Skios [Hardcover]

Michael Frayn has said that Skios was a literary experiment to see if a farce could be written as a novel. The premise is that Dr Norman Wilfred, a distinguished academic, is to give a lecture on 'scientometrics' at a research foundation on a Greek island. When Dr Wilfred arrives at the venue, he turns out to be suspiciously young and charming. The explanation is that he is not Dr Wilfred, but Oliver Fox, a floppy-haired Hugh Grant-type character, who decided to impersonate Dr Wilfred after seeing Nikki Hook, the attractive administrator who came to meet the visiting speaker at the airport.

Apart from mistaken identity, many other familiar devices of the genre are present: lost clothing, thwarted romantic designs, preparations for a public event which is bound to go awry. It is all firmly in the Wodehouse tradition.

Skios is elegantly written and, particularly in the first half, pretty funny. Frayn is good on the fatuousness of so many lectures of this type (well captured by the title of Dr Wilfred's talk: 'Innovation and Governance: The Promise of Scientometrics').

But Frayn's literary experiment is not, I think, entirely successful. Although some relaxation of the laws of probability is inevitable in a farce, the events related here go beyond the frontier of the merely improbable into the land of the frankly incredible. Too often the reader finds themselves saying, in Victor Meldrew style, 'I don't believe it!'.

The other weakness is the ending, which is unsatisfying and arbitrary. It is almost as if Frayn simply lost patience with assembling the intricate Swiss watch of his plot and simply threw the thing against the wall.

Ever since I read Frayn's Towards the End of the Morning and watched his play Noises Off, I have been a fan. His Skios takes a similarly ironic and humorous stance (he has written other more serious books) and is a cracking read. It also (a familiar Frayn tactic)debunks many myths re. academia (I am a lecturer!), celeb-culture, ageism, tourism and event management.

Ideal for holiday reading!

Set on a Greek island, a cultural foundation is preparing for the biggest event in its year at which renowned academic Dr Norman Wilfred is due to give the keynote speech. Also heading to the island on the same plane is Oliver Fox, a morally vacant but charming Lothario, who has arranged an assignation with a girl who he has met for only five minutes but has invited to spend a week with him at the villa that he was due spend a week with his ex-girlfriend before she threw him out. But when the girl send to collect Dr Wilfred from the airport, Nikki, turns out to be irresistibly charming Oliver decides to play the role of Dr Wilfred and follow her to the foundation while the real Dr Wilfred, minus luggage is transported to the villa at the other end of the island. Someone still has to give the speech though - will it be the real Dr Wilfred or the fake Dr Wilfred?

As you will have gathered this has all the ingredients for a good, old-fashioned farce. Michael Frayn is as well placed as anyone to explore this now somewhat neglected genre, having written the superb farce play "Noises Off" as well as the screenplay for the John Cleese vehicle "Clockwise". The question remains as to whether the farce genre can work as successfully as a comic novel. Frayn is very far from a one genre practitioner but it's hard to think of any modern writer who is as well versed in the nuances of farce. If anyone can pull it off, it is going to be him.

However, not even a writer of Frayn's undoubted gifts can get quite get this to work successfully. Having said that, it would make a fine holiday read - it's light, easy reading with pleasant doses of humour, although even here, the ending is likely to prove a little disappointing.

There are innumerable challenges a farce writer faces. One of these is that in an age of modern communications, the situations that farce relies upon of misunderstanding are just so unlikely as to seem quaint. Thus, Frayn spends much time explaining why mobile phones aren't working - dead batteries, no charger, thrown in pool etc. Farce also relies on a certain suspension of belief that works fine in a theatre or a cinema where the time period is finite. Although this is a fairly light book, it's not a one-sitting read and this makes it more difficult to sustain this disbelief for the duration.

It's almost wholly lacking in characterisation too and what there is consists of lightly drawn, cliché stereotypes. Again this isn't a problem so much with say a film, but detracts from a book. Much as you might thoroughly enjoy the film "Clockwise", try explaining it to someone who hasn't seen it and conveying the same enjoyment. It's simply impossible without the visual input provided by, in this case Cleese. So too "Skios" seems to need actors to bring these characters to life. Here we have two taxi drivers who are always mistaken for each other - on screen this could be a nice running gag, but here it's just too predictable and obvious.

For all that, Frayn is a master of his art and maintains a pace that is impressive as disaster follows disaster and the plot development is admirably complicated. As you would expect given his experience in screen writing and play writing he has a good ear for dialogue, but the descriptions verge on tired and cliché at several points. To some extent expectations are unfairly raised by the book's inclusion on this year's Booker list. It's not Frayn's fault that he is nominated but it's far from his best literary work. For that, check out "Spies" or "Headlong".

As a holiday read, I'd recommend it with a warning that the ending might disappoint (although with such a build up it's difficult to live up to a satisfying ending). As a Booker nominee though, it's not even Frayn's best work and far from one of the twelve best novels of the year in my view. It would, though, make a pleasingly entertaining movie one feels.