Roy Fuller, poet as well as novelist, has in a sense pooled his resources in [The Carnal Island] in order to probe the range of questions thrown up by an encounter between an old poet and a young one, and the result is a very perceptive, often amusing, and at times sad and touching, novel. The narrative framework is deliberately slight. The young poet, James, has an assignment to persuade the 80-year-old poet, Daniel House, to compile an anthology for a publisher, and visits him in his house overlooking an estuary. He meets the old man's wife, his illegitimate daughter and her illegitimate daughter, his local friends, his 15-year-old dog. Almost the only 'action' is a swim in the sea and a fatal ferry-crossing. But the light chain of events, all ordinary except for the climactic ferry, is carefully forged to set memory and speculation free, to allow...