Nick Laird’s sophomore novel tackles a well-worn literary trope – the love triangle – and finds once again that sexual jealousy trumps male friendship. Glover’s Mistake is the story of two London roommates, James and David, both besotted with the same feminine prize: Ruth Marks, a 45-year-old acclaimed feminist artist from the US. James is 23 and dashing, a bartender with impeccable hair. David is more than a decade older, portly and the author of misanthropic rants on a blog called the Damp Review.

Though it comes as little surprise that Ruth falls for James, what follows is an entertaining, if not particularly revolutionary, tale of seduction and betrayal: David seethes and plots his revenge. The comedic schadenfreude brings to mind another British classic of hatred-among-friends: Martin Amis’s Success. While Glover’s Mistake is not nearly as exuberantly nasty, it manages to find its dark, pessimistic groove.

The London art world provides the backdrop to the novel, but Laird stops short of risking yet another two-dimensional satire of those hallowed halls. (A note to future authors: fine art is elitist, money-obsessed and sometimes ridiculous; we get it.) And the author keeps our interest despite the various shades of annoyance in his romantic triangle. Ruth is self-absorbed and prone to pompous lectures on creativity; James is immature, preening and a fervent Christian to boot; David can be a petty, bitter loner. Our three protagonists grind their way toward the novel’s denouement. We know all along that it’s not going to be pretty. If there is a lesson to be learned here, it’s that all’s fair in love – even a knife in the back.

By Scott Indrisek

Published by Viking