Paul Bailey

Contrived Excesses

The Mangan Inheritance

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Cape 352pp £5.50 order from our bookshop

Miss Herbert (The Suburban Wife)

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Virago 320pp £5.95 order from our bookshop

Brian Moore is among the least predictable of living novelists. Each book he writes, whatever its merits, is totally unexpected and completely different from its predecessors. He enjoys changing course. He has many stories to tell, and he tells them in a variety of ways. Not for him the annual rehash of a trusted and familiar plot; not for him the same few characters going through their customary paces.

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