Miracles of compression

In the course of a lifetime of fiction reviewing, I have come to the conclusion that, though my colleagues are prepared doggedly to persevere with the reading of a novel from its muddled opening to its inconsequential end, they will read no more than four or five stories in a collection. What always guides them in this lazy choice is that one of the favoured stories will be the title one and another the most substantial. Since the title story is also the most substantial — in effect a novella — in Allan Massie’s Klaus, one can be absolutely certain that it will be the one on which every reviewer, including myself, chiefly concentrates.

The central figure here is Klaus Mann, oldest of the six children of the novelist Thomas, a figure of such intellectual grandeur that his son felt constantly intimidated by him as he compared his granite genius with his own mercurial talent.