I’ve had this book for years, and I thought I had read it. Took a look at it a week or two back and realised I hadn’t. So I did.

What I also didn’t realise was that it’s a Dream Archipelago story. Which is surprising, since it starts in present-day (1980s) London. In fact it’s the first novel (though not, I think, the first story) to use the Dream Archipelago as a setting, or state of mind.

Peter Sinclair suffers various crises in his personal life, and decides to write an autobiography to better understand himself. Through various revisions his writing becomes more fictionalised, until he’s writing about the islands. Or living in them. Is it alternative world or madness? Portal fantasy or mental breakdown?

Or maybe both, or neither. You could argue that as a story it doesn’t entirely make sense, but I don’t think I’d go there. I mean, I’d go there, to the Archipelago, for sure (it feels a lot like Greece to me, and indeed Sinclair and his ex/not-ex girlfriend met there, we are told).

It’s a novel that leaves you questioning its realities, and maybe your own. And that seems like a good thing to me.