SOURCE: Parrinder, Patrick. “Whitehall Farces.” London Review of Books 14, no. 19 (8 October 1992): 13.

In the following review, Parrinder compares the central motifs in Now You Know to similar themes in Frayn's earlier novels and plays, praising Frayn as an inventive and innovative comic writer.

‘In its attitude towards Dickens,’ George Orwell wrote, ‘the English public has always been a little like the elephant which feels a blow with a walking-stick as a delightful tickling … One knows without needing to be told that lawyers delight in Sergeant Buzfuz and that Little Dorrit is a favourite in the Home Office.’ Lawyers these days doubtless read John Mortimer, and dons read the new university wits like David Lodge and Tom Sharpe. But in any wider competition for the post of English humorist-in-residence, Michael Frayn would surely be a prime contender. Now verging on sixty, his collected plays and translations fill three thick volumes...