Changes

|title=Jeff in Venice, Death in Varanasi

|author=Geoff Dyer

|reviewer=John Lloyd

|buy=No

|borrow=Maybe

|pages=304

|publisher=Canongate Books Ltd

|isbn=978-1847672711

}}

Meet Jeff. He's a journalist living in London, with a fine line in delaying his work effort and a keen eye for detail. He can see how the world is made better by a smile from a random shopkeeper - yet seems too grumpy to try it himself. Instead he suspects his habit of walking round, mouthing or speaking out his own inner thoughts is making him seem a scary old man. He can partly address this, by dying his hair. And he can stop walking round London when he gets commissions to report back from the modern arts Biennale in Venice. Soon, however, the only work of art he's at all worried about goes by the name of Laura...

This put me in mind of [[The Terrible Privacy of Maxwell Sim by Jonathan Coe]], for a vaguely linked journey to self-destruction by a modern man - but then I could happily read 99% and not just 55%.

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[[Category:General Fiction]]