The prose is slicker than snot: clear, smooth, slipping along from page to page, and the bland dialogue offers no witty lines to break the hypnotic drone. Take every cliche you’ve ever read about English boarding schools - outgrown clothes, family sacrifice to buy required cap and blazer, sadistic prefects, social snobbery, cruel mockery, best friends acquired in an instant, slippering and caning, dreadfully important examination results, petty crime blamed on Our Hero, nobility of character leading to brink of disaster, wise advice from strange old man - and here it is, rendered in a series of declarative sentences stripped of nuance and dimensionality. The first half of the book is pretty much “ Tom Brown’s Schooldays,” as written by Ernest Hemingway on an off day. We then take up Harry’s life from the age of 6, when he escapes the working-class misery of his family life by getting a scholarship to boarding school. She marries Arthur Clifton shortly thereafter, hopes for the best, and Harry shows up eight months later. Harry’s life might or might not have begun when his mother had a lapse of judgment while on a works outing to Weston-super-Mare.

You keep watching, but you don’t know why. Reading this book is like watching TV when you’ve lost the remote. It covers the life and times of Harry Clifton, an English boy who first appears as a zygote and then goes on to (slightly) more interesting things. “Only Time Will Tell” is the opening volume in a new series from best-selling author Jeffrey Archer.

Only time will tell archer