IT’S THAT TIME OF YEAR WHEN THIS COLUMN attempts to add flavour to your post-election holiday with a sprinkling of well-seasoned fiction — that is, when we look to those tried and tested novels that are occasionally overlooked in our neophilic rush to the new and wanting.
This summer we take inspiration from John Walsh’s very entertaining memoir of 1980s literary London, Circus of Dreams (2022). In it he suggested that 1984 was an annus mirabilis for modern British fiction, where promise burst into ambitious achievement, most strikingly in the form of Martin Amis and his masterpiece Money. The expansion of both the book chain Waterstones and newspaper weekend supplements meant more sales and more coverage for literary fiction.
The Booker Prize also seemed to be in its pomp in those…
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The Critic (Digital) - 1 Issue, August/September 2024