Jonathan Coe’s new novel is a fictionalised account of the lives and loves of two real-life, long-dead musicians: Maurice Ravel, doyen of French Impressionism, and the English composer Ralph Vaughan Williams, who studied with Ravel in 1907–8, thereby, it’s been said, imparting to his own work what can only be described as a certain je ne sais quoi. The tale is told by Pierre Vicente Mylonas, a fictional character based closely on the critic and musicologist Michel-Dimitri Calvocoressi, who introduced the two composers, and presented as a memoir found by chance and edited for publication by one Justine La Chasse, the – here we must pause for breath – granddaughter of Ravel’s brother’s masseuse’s widower’s housekeeper.

There’s a particular device I recognised from Coe’s early work whereby his considerable comic gifts are used as a vehicle for his forensic interest in co-incidence and contingency. A gag will turn out to be not just a gag but a pivotal, decisive plot point. In this case, the comedy