Daily Telegraph - 14/2/2004

Making love by Marius Brill (Black Swan, £6.99)
To begin by explaining that the narrator of this book is another book is to give some idea of the craziness it involves. The book/narrator is an amorous soul and falls in love with anybody who reads him, but he has been starved of affection of late, standing overlooked in Shepherd's Bush library.

When Miranda, a pungently unattractive young woman in search of love, steals the book, he is in rapture. But he is an unusual book and contains details of the real nature of love. Rather than a heartfelt emotion, romantic love is a government scheme to keep us all in our place. This inflammatory truth has been deemed so sensitive that some shady government department has destroyed every other copy and when they discover Miranda has found one, they are on to her.

A highly inventive comic romp follows. Sometimes the plot stumbles under the weight of Marius Brill's observational asides and his puns can make you wince, but this is great fun. TC