Reviewer: Emera
Date read: 8.23.2025
Book from: Personal collection
Edward is living in a world he can’t afford and to which he doesn’t belong. To camouflage himself, he has catered to his friends: fetching drycleaning, sorting flowers for premieres. It’s a noble effort, really – anything to keep his best pals Robert and Stanza happy. In return, his proximity to them might sponge the shame of his birth and violent past cleanly away. But the chink in his armour is his painfully unrequited love for Stanza. When he realises Stanza and Robert are an item, Edward is pushed too far. His little acts of kindness take a sinister turn, giving way to the unspeakable brutality Edward fears is at his core. Are there limits to what he will do for his friends? Are there limits to what he will do to them?
This was billed as a hybrid of The Talented Mr. Ripley, Brideshead Revisited, and P.G. Wodehouse, and boyyyyy how it delivered. It’s a lovingly, gleefully dark cocktail of painful social comedy and violent slapstick. Sweet’s prose is unnervingly unhinged, drifting away into feverish reveries that suggest that Edward’s repression has him teetering on the brink of psychosis. Sweet’s social observations—whether rendered as dialogue, texts, or Edward’s frantic internal observations—are unsparing, full of a brutal, despairing hilarity that had me reading paragraphs out loud to friends, so we could all say “daaaamn” together.
This is the perfect black comedy for people who imprinted on Brideshead Revisited. Insert here also the obligatory mention of the movie Saltburn —but note that The Kellerby Codewas written first!