Sebastian Smee 
Whatever next?
Philip Hensher’s King of the Badgers is set in Hanmouth, a small English coastal town described so thickly that it is established from the outset as effectively a character in… Read more
Shady people in the sun
The characters in Rose Tremain’s deft new novel are almost all remarkably unpleasant. The characters in Rose Tremain’s deft new novel are almost all remarkably unpleasant. Not just wicked or… Read more
Home is where the heart is
Brooklyn, by Colm Tóibín Colm Tóibín’s Brook- lyn is a simple and utterly exquisite novel. The writing is so transparent, so apparently guileless, that I kept wondering what trickery Tóibín… Read more
The invisible man
Bleak, bleak, bleak. Anita Brookner’s new novel, Stran- gers, is unlikely to inspire resolutions to self-improvement or even cathartic tears. But its main character, a retired bank manager called Paul… Read more
Conflicts of interest?
Land of Marvels, by Barry Unsworth Land of Marvels is so topical, and so cute, that its title can only be read with some irony. A tale of oil, archaeology,… Read more
Going the distance
What I Talk About When I Talk About Running, by Haruki Murakami There’s nothing tremendous, startling, or even revelatory about Haruki Murakami’s latest book. The whole exercise is too pointedly… Read more
Muddying the waters
This fitfully involving, but for the most part irritating, melodrama is Tim Parks’s 14th novel, and not one of his best. Set almost entirely in India, it begins with the… Read more
A mask that eats the face
A man whose personal life contains as many potentially unflattering episodes as V. S. Naipaul might easily have been resistant to the idea of biographical scrutiny. In fact, however, Naipaul… Read more
The pleasure of his company
Some writers have the ability to poison one’s daily existence. James Salter, I have discovered, is one of them. To read him is to be painfully reminded of how mundane,… Read more
Once more with less feeling
Diary of a Bad Year by J. M. Coetzee In the last scene of J. M. Coetzee’s Booker Prize-winning novel, Disgrace, the main character, David Lurie, helps to put down… Read more
Too much information
In managing too carefully the revelation of truth, parents often betray it. Graham Swift’s new novel is narrated by a mother and addressed to ‘you’, her teenage twins, boy and… Read more
Formal feeling comes good
Contemporary Australian fiction, like Australian film, is known more for its exuberance and antic energy than its reticence and restraint. Deborah Robertson’s Careless, a first novel that has already won… Read more
When all the clocks have stopped
A great many unspeakable things happen in the course of Cormac McCarthy’s brilliant, distressing new novel. But the worst, the most unspeakable, has already taken place. We are not told… Read more
One kiss too many
Something is eating away at Father David Anderton, the narrator of Be Near Me, a novel as beautiful and perfectly pitched as its title. An English priest working in the… Read more
The art of the matter
Listing page content here Peter Carey’s ropy, visceral prose casts a powerful spell. It has a swarming, improvised quality which besieges and easily overwhelms objections, including any reluctance to credit… Read more
Missing the middle path
Listing page content here Reading David Mitchell’s fourth novel, which is told through the eyes of a 13-year-old boy, reminded me why girls have little or no interest in the… Read more
The fine art of appreciation
John Updike is, among one or two other things, a model art critic. Observant, sympathetic and knowledgeable, he also writes at a useful remove from the polemics that rack today’s… Read more
Method acting with a vengeance
Two of a good thing is usually better than one — unless, of course, the good thing in question is you. Nobel Prize-winner José Saramago’s new novel, The Double, is… Read more
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