SOURCE: McHale, Brian. Review of Next, by Christine Brooke-Rose. Review of Contemporary Fiction 19, no. 2 (summer 1999): 127-28.

In the following review, McHale asserts that the greatest strength of Next lies in the accuracy and range of the London dialects employed in the monologues that make up the narrative.

Having apparently said farewell to literature in Textermination (1991) and written her memoirs in Remake (1996), Brooke-Rose surprises us with a new novel as strong as anything she has ever written. Here [in Next] she largely leaves behind the mediascape of her “Intercom Quartet” of the eighties and early nineties and ventures out into the streets to imagine the inner lives and outer wanderings of London's homeless. It's hard to picture Brooke-Rose sleeping rough at seventy-five years old or even interviewing those who do, but however she conducted her research, the result is as plausible and freshly observed as if firsthand.

This being...