As in much of his work, Frank Sargeson [in The Hangover] directs his unblinking but not uncompassionate eye towards an adolescent struggling to reconcile the disturbing facts of his widening experience with the assumptions derived from a narrow religious upbringing. It is a matter of special interest in The Hangover that this familiarity of the subject-matter is offset by the novelty of its narrative technique. Previously Mr. Sargeson has either written in the first person or adopted a limited third person stance which still keeps within one character's experience; but here the narrative perspective shifts, and although much that happens is refracted through the consciousness of the central figure, we often leave him to follow some other person's thoughts or doings. I'm not happy with this way of telling the story. Its scale and basic structure seem to me to call for the concentrated narrative method which he...