Emma Tennant's new novel is a crisply written magical mystery tour of childhood, the 'north' of the country becoming a metaphor for an ancestral sphere which is feud-ridden, sour, resistant to the new world of the child and yet viewed through the child's transforming perspective. Nothing has 'objective' truth: everything is familiar and yet fantastic; relatives and the seasons come and go; the child registers phases and shifts of mood and occasional scraps of conversation: 'What's that nice thing you're wearing?' Nothing has a context, everything is magical and superstitious, the child senses huge tides of subterranean feelings which people an ancestral home and give rise to weird, surreal images in the novel. Each relative's visit shifts the atmosphere and colouring of the child's world and thus the texture of the novel. 'Aunt Zita', especially, is the focus of pagan witchcraft and the hatred of the villagers: she is linked with the child because they both stand outside the family and the village.

The only problem with Wild Nights is that it is all texture and has almost no narrative progression. The texture is stylish and impressionistic, but once one is inside it there is little to draw the reader onward.