[Since] The Sum of Things must stand as the last novel in Olivia Manning's long and well-used career, it is still about contingent manouevres, but it is also, powerfully, about duration. In Manning's humane irony all events in life are radiantly fresh, but they are over quickly, their fulness is never quite used, and they never yield the knowledge which they tantalisingly might give if one knew where to look. So life continues until it is sliced off by death. Olivia Manning has managed to write that modern rarity, a philosophical novel formed entirely out of fragments of felt life. In The Sum of Things everything happens through people, even though the flares and barrages of history have put these people where they are….

The Sum of Things is a novel of incomplete recognitions. Vaguely trying, and equally vaguely failing, to understand, is the mark of a serious...