Regent

Denry Machin made his fortune, married his beauty, and conquered the Five Towns. Now he's forty-three, and the unbearable truth has arrived: he's become respectable. The spark that made him the famous Card has guttered out, replaced by a comfortable dread. What ails him isn't poverty or loneliness but something far worse: he's stopped being interested in his own life. When a chance encounter at the local theatre unleashes him into London, Denry discovers that reinvention at forty-three is a far trickier game than it was at twenty-three. Arnold Bennett's sequel to The Card is a sharp, compassionate comedy about the particular hell of having everything and feeling nothing, a man who has won the game and suspects the prizes are hollow. The Five Towns sparkle with incisive detail, but it's Denry's midlife reckoning that gives the novel its unexpected weight. For anyone who has ever wondered what comes after you've already made it.