Clever, inventive and assured though ['Hackenfeller's Ape,' 'Flesh,' and 'The Snow Ball'] are, they now, 15 or 20 years later, show up as the work of a thin imagination. Brophy's sleight-of-hand, her control over her metaphors, her adventures into rococo prose are impressive. But for a first-time reader, the works seem hollow; and in spite of their intimate references to Mozart's humane grandeur, they entirely fail to move.

To ask that novels should produce strong feelings by being interested in and truthful about people is naïve, and it's for continuing to ask this that fiction reviewers are most despised. Why shouldn't novels, on the contrary, produce strong feelings by their interest in metaphor? Nevertheless, Brophy's novels do seem lacking in that old 'felt life.' It's instructive to compare her with Ian McEwan, not only because his chilling use of extremes makes her Sixties' outrageousness look tame...