Puckling, if you do read it, I hope you'll like it! The plot is somewhat predictable, according to some reviewers on amazon, but I love the book for the scenes, ideas and characters. If you read the amazon reviews, you'll also note that there are readers who hate the book on principle because they see it as a Christian allegory. Weirdly, I never read it that way - at all. The so-called "heavy handed" message I got from this book (I suppose this might be a mild spoiler) is that suffering is an unavoidable part of life, and that we often cause our own suffering, and each others', by our ignorance and failure to see the truth about ourselves. Which - doesn't strike me as a particularly right-wing or reprehensible "message", if it's a message at all. This, to me, is a book that asks questions rather than giving answers. And that's why I love it more than other books by Chesterton I've read.