Anne Chisholm
The best new book by an established writer I have read is Ian McEwan's The Child In Time (Cape, £10.95), a haunting story full of emotion and drama, both political and personal. A first novel that has impressed me very much is Lesley Hall Pinder's Under The House (Bloomsbury, £11.95), a subtle, original novel about dark family secrets. Raleigh Trevelyan's The Golden Oriole (Secker, £16.95) is an ex- ploration of the family too, but of rather a different kind; a wonderfully rich, evoca- tive account of several generations of Trevelyans in India, part history, part travelogue, part memoir. The most over- promoted rather than overrated, accolade would have several vigorous contenders this year but should probably go to Sarum by Edward Rutherfurd (Hutchinson, £9.95), a monumentally long and dull story of Wiltshire folk over thousands of Years, whose publishers tried to cheer it up by offering a choice of covers and have now produced a special snow scene for Christ- mas. Finally, the most pleasurable read I have had all year was a book first published in 1966, which I read in the perfect place at the perfect time; it was The Mask of Apollo by Mary Renault, one of her vivid, con- vincing recreations of ancient Greece. It concerns the life and times of a travelling actor in the 4th century BC and I read it on buses between Epidaurus and Delphi.
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