Fiction

In the opening chapter of The Dead Republic, the last novel in The Final Roundup trilogy, the narrator, Henry Smart, gives us a handy summary of the story so far. With it comes a sharp reminder of just how improbable much of the plotting has been. ‘I found my wife again in Chicago,’ recalls Henry, ‘when I broke into a house with Louis Armstrong . . . I crawled into the desert to die. I died. I came back from the dead when Henry Fonda pissed on me.’ Roddy Doyle, of course, once specialised in more straightforward tales of working-class Dubliners, whether comic (The Van), tragic (The Woman Who Walked

In times of anxiety or confusion the most effective palliative is a good detective story. The requirement is that a sense of justice be restored, and, paradoxically, given the fictional events portrayed, a much desired sense of order. The effect is transitory but reliable. It is also necessary that the protagonist be a man of principle. Such a one is the unassailably virtuous Simon Serrailler, Susan Hill’s detective hero, now making his fifth appearance in this agreeable series. He is, of course, no stranger to melancholy, largely in connection with his equally high-minded girlfriend from whom he is momentarily estranged. And he lives in Lafferton, a small fictional town which

Unusually for a work of fiction, Tim Pears’ new novel opens with a spread of black-and-white photographs, part of an ‘investigator’s report’ into a fatal collision said to have taken place on a Birmingham dual carriageway in the summer of 1996. Unusually for a work of fiction, Tim Pears’ new novel opens with a spread of black-and-white photographs, part of an ‘investigator’s report’ into a fatal collision said to have taken place on a Birmingham dual carriageway in the summer of 1996. The victim is a six year-old girl named, Sara Ithell. Her father, 35 year-old, Owen, loses both his right hand and his livelihood as a jobbing gardener to

Not long ago I had an email from a friend, wondering if I’d yet read the new Ian McEwan. Not long ago I had an email from a friend, wondering if I’d yet read the new Ian McEwan. ‘Talk about a bolt from the blue,’ she said. ‘McEwan does slapstick. I never saw that coming.’ She added (unfairly, I thought) that you might class On Chesil Beach as slapstick of an unintentional sort, but her point holds. Here, in a book around a scientific theme of considerable seriousness — global warming and renewable energy — McEwan has written the closest thing he’s ever done to a farce. Told in three

When I was about half way through Little Hands Clapping, Dan Rhodes’s fifth published book, I started a list of the innocent characters on whom fate and their author play nasty tricks. When I was about half way through Little Hands Clapping, Dan Rhodes’s fifth published book, I started a list of the innocent characters on whom fate and their author play nasty tricks. I thought of the decent doctor who marries a woman so beautiful and yet so unfaithful that it ruins his life; the two good-looking children who have eyes only for one another, until they discover that he is in fact the most beautiful man in the

In little more than a decade, the cosy world of Anglo-American crime fiction has been transformed by wave after wave of Scandinavian invaders. Some, like Steig Larsson, are suddenly parachuted into the bestseller lists almost before we have had time to become aware of their existence. Others, like Iceland’s Arnaldur Indridason and Norway’s Karin Fossum, advance steadily but less dramatically in terms of sales and critical plaudits. And then there’s Henning Mankell, the Swedish commander-in-chief of the invading forces, who deserves a category to himself. He is a distinguished playwright, publisher and children’s author, who has a long and honourable record of supporting charitable causes, especially in Africa. But he

It would not have been so easy to describe what Joanna Trollope’s early novels were ‘about’ in a few words, but recently she has been writing what the Americans call ‘issue books’, and they can be more readily encapsulated. It would not have been so easy to describe what Joanna Trollope’s early novels were ‘about’ in a few words, but recently she has been writing what the Americans call ‘issue books’, and they can be more readily encapsulated. The Other Family is about just that — a man who has, or had, two of them. We only meet Richie in death; at the start of the book Chrissie and their

For those unfamiliar with Martin Amis’s short story, ‘What Happened to Me on My Holiday’, written for The New Yorker in 1997, it was a purist exercise in autobiographical fiction; not even the names were changed. For those unfamiliar with Martin Amis’s short story, ‘What Happened to Me on My Holiday’, written for The New Yorker in 1997, it was a purist exercise in autobiographical fiction; not even the names were changed. The Pregnant Widow is a far more complex, troubling piece of work. Amis did indeed spend much of the summer after his second year at Oxford in a castle near the Mediterranean, though not in Tuscany; that would

Probably my opinion of this bold book is worthless. Peter Carey, having decided to write a novel about Alexis de Tocqueville’s visit to the United States in 1831-2, read, among many other works, my biography of Tocqueville, which was published two years ago in, he says, ‘the nick of time’. He is kind enough to call it ‘delightful’, and has plundered it assiduously. What I myself find delightful is the way in which Carey has picked up the signals. I never expected such a close, intelligent reader, and I’m glad to think my work has been of use to him. But this does not make me a dispassionate reviewer. And

Nobody who reads Nigel Farndale’s The Blasphemer is likely to complain about being short-changed. Nobody who reads Nigel Farndale’s The Blasphemer is likely to complain about being short-changed. It tackles five generations of the same family, three wars, Mahler’s ninth symphony and contemporary Islamic terrorism. Along the way, it ponders the nature of male courage, the theological implications of Darwinism and, rather more surprisingly, the existence of angels. As a journalist himself, Farndale also seems to have noted the career path of Sebastian Faulks — that great exemplar for all British journos dreaming of literary glory. Like Birdsong, The Blasphemer depicts a soldier’s affair with an older French woman who