Looking through Bloomsbury’s Spring catalogue a month or so ago, l found myself reflecting, in more than usually despondent terms, on the way in which fiction gets reviewed in this country. Seen en masse, books are rather sickly things – especially the sort singled magazine books pages, if not one by David Park or Christopher Kenworthy? Broadly speaking, novels by people one has heard of. Let Joanna Trollope, say, produce a further addition to her teeming œuvre, let Margaret Drabble out for special promotion in publishers’ catalogues; but as hotly canvassed item gave way to hotly canvassed item (Sadie Blackeyes’ chick-lit debut Bitchpack Confidential, Life Under New Labour, The Kidz Guide to Drugz – I am making this up, but the genres will be familiar to you), I came upon something I very much wanted to read: a novel called The Big Snow by the Irish writer David Park.

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