(Edited highlights of the panel's review taken from the teletext subtitles that are generated live for Newsnight Review.)

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MARK KERMODE:
It's not a well written book. There is a thing at the end of the acknowledgements where he says, "I come from a world where huge holes in the storyline were not necessarily considered bad things." He means wrestling. The triumph is what he manages to do is make it apply to the book. It's written in a meat and potato style like early Stephen King. The fact that the story shines through the not very good style is a credit. It mixes the toughness and sentimentality, and when it turns tough it turns nasty. It was a rip-roaring read. Occasionally there were sentences when you think you should have subbed that.

TOM PAULIN:
The prose style is quite unbelievably dreadful. There was a young woman called Terry , she was described as looking wonderful and feminine. And gives wonderful kisses. Every sentence is a compendium of clich�s. A banal series of sexual fantasies. You can see that Vietnam and the American civil war, there they are duplicating for each other and also the terror of where the violence is leading this society. And it's just a deep, deep, hang-up. And then I began to think he keeps using the word "win", and the word "defeat ". At some psychological level it's about if you win, maybe you lose. It's junk. It's awful.

MARK LAWSON:
He said any critic who dislikes it, he wants to see them in the ring. You will have to go in.

TOM PAULIN:
I would not last a second.

MARK LAWSON:
Paulin the Mauler!

JULIE MYERSON:
I'm not going to the ring! I would have paid not to have to finish it. Having said that I can see a case for liking it. I'm not over there. I can see that he was trying to do something.

MARK LAWSON:
What is the case for it?

JULIE MYERSON:
Extremely violent, and incredibly cliched. Apparently he read Catcher in the Rye and thought, "I can do that but I'll put story in it." That's what he did. That's what I hated. Apart from the unspeakable gratuitous violence and the masturbation in the shower. He has developed a 17-year-old voice that he thinks works, but it does not work, because it commentates on itself. I was trying in the beginning to go along with him and then he pushes you away again.

MARK KERMODE:
Firstly I don't think it's tedious. It rips along. Any author, who read Catcher in the Rye and said "I can do that with a plot" should be applauded. Anyone who hates mullet hair cuts that much should be applauded. The honesty about male sexuality is brave.