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Enigmatic Fable. Uncumber's return to the painless world from which she started has a curious effect on the reader. It is not simply that this luxurious futuristic paradise seems less real than the squalor and desolation on the earth's surface. It is rather that the reader has seen the squalor with fresh eyes. To Uncumber, a heap of maggots or an oily wave was new, astonishing, even romantic. In Frayn's crisp prose, these things seem strangely romantic to the reader, too. This enigmatic little fable confirms Michael Frayn's position as one of the few worthwhile novelists writing in Britain today.