I picked up 'Serious Men' almost 4 years after 'The Illicit Happiness of Other People'. 'Illicit' was perhaps the book of the year for me in 2013 and 'Serious Men' was purchased in a post 'Illicit' fugue. Reading Joseph is as sublime as watching Tendulkar bat or any of the 2 Ronaldo's play soccer. There isn't a man who was more ordained to be an author than Joseph and 'Serious Men' - his first book - is the reading equivalent of watching Tendulkar bat at 16 or a young Cristiano amaze Old Trafford on a goalless debut; a time when the joy of doing the job overtook the job itself. Surely, 'Illicit' is a much surer book, funnier and a more tangy plot but 'Serious Men' is a serious masterpiece, darkly comic in parts, poignant in others. The characters are so real, that you could almost touch them in Joseph's pages.
There are a handful of authors whose every book I shall read and pick up (Zaidi, Higashino, Levy/ Scott Clarke, Rutherford) and Joseph is one of them - so poetic that his writing might as well be music.
Unmissable.
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