"Men in Love", like "The Arabian Nights", is about a storyteller whose stories contain other stories. As in Alasdair Gray's "Lanark", "1982 Janine", "Poor Things", and "The Book of Prefaces", this one has many styles of narrative and location. Periclean Athens, Renaissance Florence, Victorian Somerset mingle with Britain under the New Labour Party, viewed from the West End of Glasgow. More than 50 per cent is fact and the rest possible, but must be read to be believed.