Anita Brookner
Death of the novel — again. This conclusion was reached after reading the ramshackle performances of J. M. Coetzee (Diary of a Bad Year, Harvill Secker, £16.99), Michael Ondaatje (Divisadero, Bloomsbury, £17.99) and Philip Roth (Exit Ghost, Cape, £16.99). I make exception for Ian McEwen's On Chesil Beach (Cape, £12.99), which should have won the Man Booker, and Justin Cartwright's The Song Before it is Sung (Bloomsbury, £16.99), a subtle exploration of a troubling friendship. Everything else proved unmemorable.
Rereadings: the novels of Edith de Born, completely forgotten precursor, both in style and subject matter, of Sybille Bedford. Of cosmopolitan background — her books are set in Austria, France and Belgium — she demonstrates an intriguing combination of rootlessness and good manners. I recommend The House in Vienna and The Flat in Paris (both Chapman and Hall). These novels are long out of print and perhaps need not be revived. Their saving grace is that, like her slightly younger contemporaries, Elizabeth Bowen and Elizabeth Taylor, this author writes like a lady.
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