For sheer loneliness, I think, writing a novel beats running any day. Alan Sillitoe evidently agrees. Smith, the cross-country racing delinquent of his famous story, "The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner," ends his workout with a sprint toward a kind of anarchistic, angry-young-man sanity. But Ernest Cotgrave, the hero of Sillitoe's latest novel, The Storyteller, gradually collapses into paranoia and madness….

Along the way, Ernie tells a few marvelous tales…. [They] are rich in detail and suspense, worth at least a pint for anyone who could tell them in a pub.

But the problem is that Ernest Cotgrave probably wouldn't have found his own story worth telling. Not much really happens to him until the final breakdown, which is too confused to be truly frightening; most of the other characters including Cotgrave's wife, Marion, are shadows vaguely refracted through Ernie's narrative voice. What is missing is just what...