The tone grew a bit monotonous and I never came to care much about the characters. That said, I thought it was a lot better than The Buried Giant. I still need to read Remains of the Day.

I'm not up to date on 2000s Brit Lit, but I have read a number of British novels from that period that I think are better — Atonement, White Teeth, Wolf Hall, etc. If you open it beyond that, as Time apparently did, you capture even more books I consider better — Gilead, etc.