I really wanted to enjoy this book. I was going through Bridget Jones Withdrawal and reading any lurid covered humourous looking pulp I could get my hands on. This was very popular at the time and I thought that all those people couldn't be wrong. Oops.

It's diverting enough and even entertaining in places, but only at the very lowest level - toilet humour is funny, but you know there's something wrong when an account of Delhi Belly is the best thing in a book. I'm the last person to say that a book has to be 'literary' in order to be of any worth, but honestly, this is pure pulp. The main character does nothing but whinge and whine and act half his age. The characters in general are paper thin and stereotypical, and their actions cliched and predictable. It is kind of funny, though not as hilarious as you might hope, and if you've been backpacking, you'll probably identify with it. But for all this, it remains so badly written it's almost painful to read.

This is dross of the highest order - perfectly suited to people who never normally read books, and therefore have nothing to compare it to.

My girlfriend gave me this book as a humorous alternative to the dark stuff that I normally read, so I was expecting some in-your-face, smart-aleck pulp that a reviewer somewhere thought was trying to be funny. I started reading it at 11 o'clock at night, and I have to say that by the time I finished it, four hours later in the wee small hours, I was pleasantly shocked to discover that it was actually very funny in a cynical sense, and overall a deeper and more insightful read than I had first expected.

Some have called the storyline pointless and the characters 2-dimensional, but that is the point of the story: it satirises the latest PC fad. Anyone who says it is pure pulp cannot have read the part where Dave encounters a Reuters journalist, a passage where the author's intent for the novel is laid bare. With Liz and Dave, Sutcliffe accurately depicts the two main types of traveller swarming into the lesser regions of the world: the self-obsessed type who make out like everything is 'karmic' and 'spiritual' without the first clue of what that means, and the type who travel and 'experience poverty' just because everyone else is doing it and they can put it on their CV. It is very fitting that, whilst following Dave around India, we learn next to nothing about the country, and likewise, with Liz on a spiritual quest, we get about as spiritual as who she's sleeping with. Add to this some very accurate portrayals of travelling (such as how when you return home, everything seems strange), and some weird and wonderful (and morally corrupt) supporting characters, not to mention all manner of bizarre situations, and it's a riot.

Don't believe the nay-sayers. You can read this novel as pulp if you want, because the humour and free-flowing storyline make it truly difficult to put down, but between the lines it is a dark and bitter diatribe to the culture of the traveller. Only the ending with its 'nosy-parker' humour lets the story down. But it shows that none of the travellers learned anything from travelling, despite their claims to the contrary. So it succeeds in its point. So buy it, now.

Ever been to a party, or in a bar and been cornered by a travel bore? Second only in the horror stakes to being cornered by an insurance salesman. Ever wondered what those travellers really got up to during their "life changing" trips to far-flung foreign climes? Well, this is the book for you.

I read this in less than a day, and it was one of those rare books that actually made me laugh out loud. Very easy to read and wickedly satirical, hitting its targets time after time.

I could see how the book may annoy Indian readers - the descriptions of life in India are scathing, but I think that it's important to realise that what Sutcliffe is doing is not attempting to descry India, but satirising the attitudes of the English back-packers to India. The meeting of the "hero" of the novel, Dave, with the resident English journalist, and that journalist's criticism of his fellow countrymen encapsulated the whole point of the novel, and contrasted India's own dignity with the shallowness of the backpackers.

Would that I could say from my own experiences that my fellow countrymen improve with age as they travel, but they don't. It's always dangerous to generalise of course, and the English are by no means the only nightmare tourists trooping all over the world, but I've come across forty-pluses with the same attitudes as the teenagers in this novel.

I have a standing invitation from friends in Mumbai to visit India. When I go, I'll think I'll stay close to them throughout, and take this novel with me as a guide.

I picked up "Love Hexagon" after reading and enjoying "Are you Experienced" by William Sutcliffe. In one sentence, if I had not read any of Sutcliffe's other works, I would have put this book down after 15 pages. I felt no emotion for the characters and generally found this book to be unoriginal, extremly predictable, and unbelievable Let me explain.

1. This book is unoriginal because it focuses on 6 twentysomething friends who live and work in London. (Seems to be a popular theme these days).
2. The story line is beyond predictable. After the first couple of chapters any capable reader can guess who will end up with whom.
3. Finally this book is unbelievable. All six characters have the ability to discover exactly what they are feeling, why they are acting the way they are, what they should do and what the other person is thinking. There is no fumbling, and no guessing when it comes to figuring the situation out.

If you are going to read anything by Sutcliffe, go for "Are you Experienced" and leave "Love Hexagon" on the shelf.

I eagerly picked up this novel, hoping to find the sense of personal discovery of "New Boy" (Sutcliffe's first novel, deserving of a long overdue release in the States), or the manic, comic glee of "Are You Experienced?" "The Love Hexagon" offers neither. What it does offer is an account of twenty-something Londoners who are cynically detached from their jobs, their aspirations, and their personal relationships. The six main characters can't really come to terms with each other, as they have yet to come to terms with themselves.

After what seems like a decade of "Friends" and far too many films starring Ethan Hawke-types as self-loathing urban romantics, the plot of this book is patently unremarkable. Still, Sutcliffe is a superior talent; his dialog moves crisply with superb cadence and aural vigor. As with his other works, Sutcliffe demonstrates why he is an international talent who deserves the acclaim he's received: he understands the anxieties of our generation and presents them in a manner void of the didactic and the bombastic. His characters speak with the requisite sophisticate irony, but with a sense of candor -which if not done well would come across as whiny earnestness.

This is an entertaining read, though ultimately unsatisfying when compared to his other works. If you have yet to read any Sutcliffe novels, start with this one and move on to the others. Whatever its shortcomings, "The Love Hexagon" has not diminished my anticipation for Sutcliffe's next book.

An entertaining dissection of the workings of the soul of 3 British (very British) couples. I particularly enjoyed how the author shows the vanity of his characters who go at extraordinary lenght not to be "found out" -- not realizing that they didn't fool anybody in the first place. It takes depth to write about ordinary people. I found myself is those characters.