Contemporary writing with a twist and a tug

John Self is The Critic’s lead fiction critic. He lives in Belfast

I AM A SENIOR PREFECT OF the school of thought that says a novel is not its subject matter — though at a push I’ll concede “not just”. How could it be otherwise? Our only access to a novel’s characters, ideas and subject is through the language the author chooses — four hundred decisions per page, as Martin Amis put it. Yet often the linguistic style in a work of fiction is treated, by author and reader, as just something to be fitted and flattened, like fondant icing, over the shape of the story. But the best books are built, bottom up, from their language.

Moreover, novels are sometimes received purely based on what they are about, as though a worthwhile subject matter is all that’s needed to make it a valuable literary document. One recent novel which I