Terms & Conditions - remarkable debut novel from NZ-based author

There has been a lot of talk in the trade about this book as the NZ-based debut author apparently received an astonishing six figure advance from London publishers Bloomsbury. 

Certainly it is refreshingly original and quite unlike anything else I have ever read. While wondering how I might sum it up I came across journalist Paul Little's thoughtful review in the latest issue (March) of North & South magazine which I was reading just after finishing the novel.
Little suggested it might best be described "as a slice of pain-filled comedy". Perfect.

Here is the publisher's back cover blurb:

Frank has been in a car accident*.

The doctor tells him he lost his spleen, but Frank believes he has lost more. He is missing memories – of the people around him, of the history they share and of how he came to be in the crash. All he remembers is that he is a lawyer who specialises in small print. But when Oscar, his brother, takes the family company into business with an inventively cruel arms manufacturer** and Alice, his wife, starts to seem oddly unlike the woman he remembers, Frank’s world starts to unspool and the terms and conditions that he has lived his life by*** begin to change.

* apparently quite a serious one

** who cannot be named for legal reasons

*** and which are rarely in his favour

Frank by the way is a lawyer who specialises in contract law.His story is both funny and sad and it is both simple & profound. Once I got into it I greatly enjoyed the story and I look forward to reading more from this new author.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Robert Glancy was born in Zambia and raised in Malawi – a country known as the Warm Heart of Africa but made famous as the place where Madonna buys her children. At 14 he moved to Edinburgh where he quickly ditched his African accent, lost his tan, and disguised his sunny disposition in a thin layer of teenage cynicism.

After Edinburgh he studied history at Cambridge. Then off to London where a career in public relations found him (before he had time to figure out what he really wanted to do).

In 2003 Robert came to New Zealand for a holiday and he has yet to leave. Initially living on Waiheke Island, Robert realised he was becoming an enthusiastic recluse, so he moved to the North Shore where he lived with his wife and children. In early 2014, Robert "will take his family on a French adventure to cat sit in a cottage in Brittany for a year, where he intends to divide his time between feeding the cat and writing his second book"..

TERMS & CONDITIONS
Robert Glancy
Bloomsbury - Paperback - NZ$29.99
Publication 3 March 2014