Many people don’t bother to read the terms and conditions; others ignore footnotes. All that may change with Robert Glancy’s funny and poignant novel, Terms & Conditions.

Frank Shaw’s been involved in a car accident. When he wakes in hospital, he discovers he’s lost his spleen and his memory. Due to the amnesia, Frank can’t remember his family or friends. But he can recall he’s a lawyer who specialises in small print, fine detail and terms and conditions.

Terms & Conditions, by Robert Glancy, Bloomsbury, $29.99

As his memory returns, he has doubts about his beautiful, high-achieving wife, Alice, their relationship, and his job.  Through a series of observations, which he hilariously narrates via footnotes, Frank deliberates on his assumed textbook life and concludes that before the accident everything about his former self was a sham. He begins to rebel, one font at a time, and the journey is often riotous, if sometimes predictable.

Glancy’s novel is a perceptive and amusing work with all the qualities of a good satirical mystery about finding one’s true identity – it is, by turns, thrilling, tragic, funny and thoughtful.

Terms & Conditions is a small, simple, yet complex and highly enjoyable book.