Jennifer Paterson
Very Irish my favourites this year. William Trevor's The Silence in the Garden (Bodley Head, £9.95) is a most wonderful novel, Which I have read twice trying to fathom some of its mysteries (what about the little hunted red-haired boy?). It is full of sinister terrors and also hilarious. The drunken exploits of the uninvited blousy mistress at the grand party are funnier than anything I have read this year. His Nights at the Alexandra (Hutchinson, £7.95) is another little treasure. J. G. Farrell's Troubles which I had never read was also an infinite joy.
In non-fiction A. N. Wilson's Tolstoy (Hamish Hamilton, £16.95) swoops away as the best biography. An intriguing little gem is A Lady Travels: The Diaries of
Johanna Schopenhauer (Routledge, £19.95) who was the mother of that dreary old philosopher. She, on the contrary, was a vibrant and fascinating lady who made tours of England and Scotland in 1803 and 1805.
The most overrated and overhyped book was Tom Wolfe's The Bonfire of the Vani- ties (Cape, £12.95) which I only finished with great difficulty as it was a present from a kind friend.
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