SOURCE: Hensher, Philip. “Riches in a Little Room.” Spectator (9 August 1997): 28-9.

In the following review, Hensher deems The Actual a brief and amusing novella.

A curious sort of volume, this; readable from end to end in not much more than half an hour, a novella [The Actual] which is probably a half or a third as long as some of Chekhov's short stories, it nevertheless contains levels of feeling and implication which seem to belong to a much longer and more spacious book. Its leisurely manner, its casual way with its characters and themes suggest a novel with plenty of time to waste, and the brevity of the book comes as an abrupt surprise. It is, perhaps, slightly reminiscent of another short book, written late in its author's career, about the super-rich, Graham Greene's Doctor Fischer of Geneva; but where that was a neat, black fable, this is...