On the Literary Front

I have been reading James Salter's Light Years with increasing admiration and pleasure. Perhaps because the prose is so rich and evocative, I find I have no great compunction to read it through to the end at a single sitting, preferring to return to it from time to time, the better to savour the wonderful writing.

At times you have to hold on tight as the narrative can lurch forward at unsettling speed and you cannot always be sure which character is under consideration.

Right from the sunny start, there is a slight sense of impending doom, and the novel as a whole is shot through with a sense of sadness. Now that I come to think of it, this same sadness was already apparent in Salter's first novel, The Hunters. It is a characteristic the author shares with the incomparable Scott Fitzgerald, with whom, incidentally, he shares more than a passing physical resemblance.

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Any day now I should be receiving the Kindle version of John le Carré's The Pigeon Tunnel:Stories from My Life. What a treat in store!