In A Good Light by Clare Chambers - review by Diana Athill

Diana Athill

Rekindling Cinders

In A Good Light

By

Century 506pp £9.99
 

NOW HERE'S A puzzle: Why has this novel received so few - hardly any - reviews? It is a pleasure to read, written with an easy, -unaffected elegance, the fourth novel of a gifted writer whose disconcerting power of observation manifests itself in shrewdness and wit: qualities which are not brandished, but which lease all the more for the unexpectedness with which they keep peeping out from under a quiet manner.

Has it been neglected because the framework of its plot is an ancient one which has frequently been used by inferior writers: the Cinderella story? Absurd, if so, since that same framework has supported some of the best novels ever written, June Eyre for one, Persuasion for another. How it

Sign Up to our newsletter

Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.

RLF - March

A Mirror - Westend

Follow Literary Review on Twitter