1 Summary
Graham Hendrick is married to Barbara and has a child, Alice. He works at an university, he teaches history. Then at a party he meets Ann. Jack Lupton introduces them to each other. They get along very well........ after a while a little bit too well to call it friendship. When Graham told his wife he had an affair, his wife said that she would go to the university authorities, because the thought that he had an affair with a student. Then he left, he took with him a suitcase which was half full. They went to court to get a divorce and Barbara took everything and he could see Alice once a week. He and Ann got married. He took Alice to the movies although he didn’t like movies. Barbara wanted to take her because in that movie his second wife had sex with men. Now it turns out that she played in other porn movies as well. He asks advice from Jack. At one night Ann and Graham discuss their holiday, it was very hard to chose a country where neither of them had been with a lover. He was now a little bit obsessive with Ann’s previous movie-affairs. One day Ann went to Jack and she told him that Graham at night asked all sorts of things about her old boyfriends she had in the movies, he also named Jack. Then she was worried that he found out that she also had an affair with Jack. That’s why she asked Jack not to tell anything about their affair in the past. From the point he saw the first movie with Ann in which she had sex, he went regularly to all her movies, sometimes even 3 times to the same one. He also asked Ann to tell him about the actors and if she slept with that actor offscreen or only in the movie and about his character and things about the movie. It even went that far that he asked her to test him, like who she fucked in what movie and also offscreen or not. Of course she didn’t want to do it. They decided to go to Toulouse on their holiday. They talk about the things Barbara did to him. At one time when he returned from his holiday Alice asked him why he left her mother. He told her that he left because they weren’t happy together but that he loved her till the end he left. A couple of time later, Ann suggested to give a party, for no exact reason. That evening a lot of people came, including Jack who enjoyed himself with a couple of models. He also put an arm around shoulder and kissed her on the cheek, Graham saw that and he left. When she found him, she tried to explain that it was only a friendship kiss for thanking him to help. But he was too drunk and angry to understand that.
He decided to read Jacks novels to find out weather Ann and he had an affair. The pieces of which he thought they were about Ann and Jack, he ripped out and put them away. Now he called Sue, Jack’s ex-wife. He asked her having lunch with him. When they have lunch Graham told her that Ann and Jack had an affair, which she already knew. But he also told her that the affair never stopped, which wasn’t true but he believed that. At the end Sue kissed him. A couple of days later he went to Jack’s house and killed him with a knife. Later that evening Ann came home and found that Graham was gone, she called Jack but no one answered and he also wasn’t with Barbara or Alice. She went upstairs to Graham’s study room and she found the pages of Jack’s books about her affair with him. The next day he still wasn’t back. She went to Jack’s apartment and Graham answered the door. Then she found Jack dead. Graham put a line round Ann’s waists, and killed himself. Ann began to scream and called the police. It was too late, Graham was already dead.

2 Title
Explanation: The things Ann did before she met Graham.
He has chosen it because that’s the main problem Graham was coping with.

3 Theme
He wants to tell the reader how far jealousy can come. The aim is to let you think about his reaction to Ann’s past. The connection with the title is that jealousy is about the things she did before she met him.

4 Structure
The climax is that he kills Jack, the ending was a surprise because you won’t expect that he kills himself.
He uses not really flashbacks but the stories Ann tells to Graham which happened in the past.

5 Characters
The most important characters are Ann, Graham and Jack
Graham: He was first married to Barbara and later to Ann, he has a child with Barbara, Alice. He teaches history at an university. He becomes very obsessive with Ann’s lovers and her previous affair with Jack.
Ann: She is Graham’s second wife and in the past she played in B- movies.
Jack: He is a writer and has a beard. He isn’t very monogram and has been married twice.

6 Setting
The story takes place in or near London. This isn’t very important

7 Tone
The tone is very realistic. There is no criticism in it.

8 Narrative technique
There is an auctorial teller, who is above the story.

9 Genre
The genre is psychological

10 Opinion
I think it was a good book.