Miss Rubens, no new literary figure, has written ten novels; she won the Booker Prize in 1970, and was short-listed for it in 1978. You would think, then, she was bound to be a household name like Bainbridge or Murdoch. For some unfathomable reason she is not. As Miss Rubens's most active fan I have been conducting a one-woman promotion service on her behalf for many years—converting, I like to think, dozens of readers to her entire works. I even wrote a panegyric on her for the World Service, calling her book, The Elected Member, 'The Electric Member' in my enthusiasm.

Why is she such a heroine to me? Birds of Passage, Miss Rubens's new novel, contains many of the answers. For a start she is funny and that, among women novelists, is a rare quality indeed. Her humour is gentle, poignant, never hilarious. It contains confusions: the possibility...