‘Absolute brilliance’ Anthony Cummins picks the best literary fiction out now: DODGE CITY
DODGE CITY by Patrick deWitt (4th Estate £18.99, 256pp)
I adored deWitt’s debut, Ablutions, about a drunk barman, as well as his Booker-shortlisted western The Sisters Brothers.
But his third novel, Undermajordomo Minor, felt too zany, and I then skipped the two novels he published after that – the absolute brilliance of his latest book makes me feel that was a big mistake.
Set in Sixties California, it follows a draft-dodging university dropout who leaves his on-off girlfriend to hit the road for Canada rather than fight in Vietnam.
En route, he stops in on variously troubled family members, not seen since their household collapsed when he was a kid.
Cue an episodic reunion fizzing with deadpan dialogue and wry observation. While weighty questions of love and duty bubble away, deWitt has the lightest touch, and every line is a joy. Pure pleasure.
FAREWELL TO EDEN by Sebastian Faulks (Hutchinson Heinemann £22, 368pp)
You never know what you’ll get with Faulks. Best known for his war novel Birdsong, he has incredible range, from state-of-the-nation satire (A Week In December) to science fiction (A Possible Life).
His new novel is a period tale set in British Mandatory Palestine, where Philip, a philosophy graduate, is sent on a peacekeeping mission in 1947.
His memories alternate with a narrative present set in 1951, as he finds himself teaching English in a rural boarding school alongside a colleague who recalls the murder of her mother in a Nazi death camp.
Clunky dialogue outlines the history of Israel-Palestine with an eye on contextualising current conflict. Yet there’s a left turn, as the book morphs into a crime story akin to Faulks’s 2007 novel, Engleby.
A serious book about the ugly legacy of violence.
COLD SUNSET by William Boyd (Viking £20, 272pp)
This is the third novel in Boyd’s latest spy series about troubled travel writer Gabriel Dax, roped into doing the British state’s dirty work during the Cold War by an alluring spymistress.
His last outing, The Predicament, found Gabriel influencing an election in Guatemala. Now he’s seeking dirt on a network of MI6 moles. Under the cover of trying to finish a new book, he heads to the US to talk to a dying poet who might have a lead, before attempting to exfiltrate a defector from Moscow – all in a day’s work.
The jet-setting action is propelled by the hero’s hard-drinking promiscuity, which provides relief from the gritty political backdrop.
Typically page-turning fun – and the handy thing about writing an ongoing series is that Boyd doesn’t have to worry about his endings.