It was an exceptional year for the novel, with impressive books from Adam Mars-Jones, Ali Smith, Edward Docx, Edward St Aubyn, A.S.Byatt, Cressida Connolly, Ross Raisin, Amitav Ghosh, Tim Binding and Jeffrey Eugenides, just to mention a few. Many congratulations to the enterprising Hesperus for bringing a small but enchanting German classic, Hans Keilson’s Komodie in Moll, to English readers for the first time.
The three new novels I’d particularly commend are, first, Robert Harris’s superb The Fear Index guaranteed to appeal to anyone who shudders when their laptop unaccountably fails to switch off. Secondly, my friend Alan Hollinghurst’s magnificent The Stranger’s Child, universally acclaimed as the best novel of the year. Its sumptuous setting perhaps prevented readers from seeing how innovative and original its design was, as a single narrative retreats into vagueness the more it is retold.
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