Talking It Over Book

The problem is that one third of this novel is spoken by Oliver, who talks like the cheese shop customer in the Monty Python sketch :

I was sitting in the public library on Thurmon Street just now, skimming through "Rogue Herries" by Hugh Walpole, and I suddenly came over all peckish. And I thought to myself, "a little fermented curd will do the trick," so, I curtailed my Walpoling activites, sallied forth, and infiltrated your place of purveyance to negotiate the vending of some cheesy comestibles!

And this is Julian Barnes' Oliver :

Things were just a touch grim at the Shakespeare School
before it occluded its portals for the vacation. A certain
crepuscularity of spirit had sauntered in, courtesy of a mis-
understanding which I hadn't bothered to trouble the prancing
Squire and his Milady with.

Oliver is so extraordinarily grating that it's hard to imagine anyone volunteering to be in the same room with him, never mind being his friend, never mind wanting to shag him. He talks like a caricature of a highly strung gay man from the 1960s. Incessantly. I couldn't believe in the central friendship between him and dull banker Stuart and I couldn't believe that the charming but also fairly dull Gillian would want to bother with either and when we get to her so very metaphorical day job of picture restoration with its essential "reversability" I think that this book is actually a cartoon which is trying to grow up to become a novel, but can't...quite...make it.