In the 1990s there was a "second wave" of the renaissance of the novel in Britain. If the first wave of the 1980s is generally characterized by the emergence of a British school of magic realism--in Salman Rushdie, Jeanette Winterson, and the consolidation of Angela Carter's reputation--a key strand of the second wave is the resurgence of a revitalized form of realism. Stephen Blanchard is a principal exponent of this method, a writer whose laconic style is deceptive, and who can extract great poignancy from simple, prosaic description. Like that of Andrew Cowan, winner of a Betty Trask Award for traditional fiction, awarded for his novel Pig (1994), Blanchard's prose is finely wrought, creating an intensity that can take his readers by surprise.

Stephen Thomas Blanchard was born in Hull, England, on 8 December 1950, the son of George Blanchard, a brewery worker, and Evelyn (née Staniforth) Blanchard. He...