13 APRIL 1996, page 43

Just An Old-fashioned Wrestler

Tobias Jones THE IMAGINARY GIRLFRIEND: A MEMOIR by John Irving Bloomsbury, £9.99, pp. 192 o much of a novelist's writing . . . takes place in the unconscious: in those depths......

Women And Children Last

Caroline Moore COLLECTED SHORT STORIES by Rose Tremain Sinclair Stevenson, £17.99, pp. 468 T his book was a bitter disappointment. I was keenly looking forward to a collec- tion......

I Did Not Think To Write An Elegy For You

a friend whom I'd not seen for forty years, until a boy passed by with sun-burnt skin and from the sky a lark spilt notes of rain. Then I remembered one hot summer day when we......