Book four is sometimes known to Penda scholars as "the first really readable one". And it's true to an extent - Osking Tether, pretty much a middle aged nobody with a desk job behind the scenes at Manchester University before this novel, came up with something that on one level seems a rather florid personal memoir of a lost soul adrift in a modern world but on another is densely and deftly plotted and actively very funny. Govinder is a charming hero and if he is a variation upon Osking Tether himself, it's quite a skill to make him neither a self pitying caricature or wish fulfilment figure but just an amiable everyman whose reactions to the strange world he is thrust into suddenly (upon his fortieth birthday, hence the name of the book) make the reader simply enjoy being in his company. There would be a sequel too, an even greater book.
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