IF THERE IS NOTHING NEW UNDER THE SUN, at least the shadow may be cast differently as time goes on. We begin our new year — featuring books that follow but also subvert literary traditions — not so much by looking back as by filling in a gap.
On one reading, 2021 was such a good year for fiction that it was too short for all its books, and some had to spill over. On another, a publisher releasing a new work of fiction in November creates a hostage to fortune, with insufficient time to build up momentum before it is crushed under the wheels of Richard Osman’s pitiless juggernaut.
The gap we are filling in is small but big, in the form of an arguably perfect short novel which — to place a literary-critical bent on Kenneth Williams’s words when diarising a new piece of furniture — exactly fills a recess I have got. Irish writer Claire
