After having read [Winter Garden] attentively, and yet without achieving total understanding, I went back and combed the text for vital clues. But they still eluded me….

Artistically, it's of small consequence because the book doesn't depend on plausibility of plot for any appreciable part of its achievement. It is a phantasy in which the Kafkaesque strangeness and the Waughian (isn't it time a pronounceable adjective like Wavian were adopted?) humour reside in the fine structure of Beryl Bainbridge's idiosyncratic prose.

Three British artists, of nebulous artistic allegiance and achievement, and Ashburner, an 'admiralty solicitor', tour Russia as guests of the 'Soviet Artists' Union'….

The book begins: 'One morning early in October, a man called Ashburner …' This seems a deliberate echo of the 'man called K' in Kafka's masterpiece The Trial…. But the truth is Beryl Bainbridge is not really a Kafkaesque author. Her mind attaches itself...