Ed King

Think I was one of the few people who started this book having somehow missed that it was based on Oedipus Rex (what can I say, I'm not quite with it at the moment), so it was a bit of a surprise when I got to the patricide and finally twigged. So the central premise of the book was somebody else's plot that we already know, but that didn't detract from the characters, particularly Diane, who was wonderfully flawed. I think I got the sense that we knew more about her than about Ed, somehow there was a sense (deliberate I think) of never quite knowing Ed. Although the three main characters were somewhat unpleasant, they were never completely dis-likable.
Having read some other reviews, I've seen that some people found Guterson inserting himself into the book in the form of a pilot who is obsessed with anagrams to be an irritatingly affected literary device. I can't say I found it more annoying than Coupland appearing in JPod, and I quite liked Guido the annoying pilot.
It gets three stars instead of four because, whilst I found it well-written and diverting, I don't think it will stay with me for very long, nor do I think I would want to re-read it in the future. I may, however, have a look at some of the author's other books.