Novel ways of writing

If you consider ‘gripping metafiction’ a self-contradictory phrase (surely metafiction disables tension through its wink-at-the-audience style?), Nicholas Royle’s First Novel (Cape, £16.99), which is in fact his seventh, may change your mind. Royle (pictured above) teaches creative writing at Manchester Metropolitan University, and in this book he gives us Paul Kinder, who teaches creative writing at Manchester while trying to write a novel.