A NITA B ROOKNER The word ‘relevant’ seems to have slipped out
of fashion for the moment but cannot entirely be avoided. I found that most of this year’s novels seemed old-fashioned, prelapsarian, as if written for a leisured age untouched by more than personal concerns, and in addition over-hyped, overpraised, and, mostly, over here. For this reason, but more for credibility, I appreci ated John Updike’s Terrorist (Hamish Hamilton, £17.99) and Martin Amis’s House of Meetings (Cape, £15.99) because they connected with serious matters and eschewed style in favour of content. I enjoyed A Night at the Majestic by Richard Davenport-Hines (Faber, £14.99), a book as gossipy as its title. This concerns a party given by Sydney and Violet Schiff in May 1922 and attended, among others, by Proust, Joyce, Picasso, Diaghilev and Stravinsky. The slightly hectic effect of this account can be allayed by reading a few pages of Proust, who is clearly the author’s hero. My best read of the year was The White Cities by Joseph Roth (Granta, £9.99), a collection of essays and articles contributed to various German newspapers between 1925 and 1929 supremely elegant, and an instance of less meaning more.
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