Umbrella, by Will Self

James Joyce once described Ulysses — in dog Italian — as a ‘maledettisimo romanzaccione’, or monstrously big novel. It has come to stand as a modernist masterpiece, and also the acme of difficult, inaccessible, unwieldy fiction. It is to be read (if at all) effortfully, in sweaty admiration, and mercifully short chunks.

One cannot help recalling Joyce when grappling with Will Self’s big new monster of a novel. And just occasionally, Self allows his formidable phrasemaking to drift towards bad Joycean pastiche: breastfeeding seen in terms of ‘hawsers and pipelines coiled away into milky fartysteam’, the ‘jewfoody stench’ of an old apartment, and the like.

But no matter. Umbrella is a magnificent celebration of modernist prose, an epic account of the first world war, a frightening investigation into the pathology of mental illness, and the first true occasion when Self’s ambition and talent have produced something of real cultural significance.