[In Ararat, D. M. Thomas attempts a balancing act somewhat like Umberto Eco's in The Name of the Rose]: on the one hand the book is loaded with Significance; on the other it's all Fiction Games receding in an infinite series. This creates an annoyingly schizophrenic effect in which the serious is undercut by the clever, and the clever made heavy by the portentous. It's a puzzling book, partly because it's made out of puzzles, partly because after two readings I'm still not sure exactly who's who or what's going on. On the game side of Thomas' brain the book is an improvisation on the word improvisation, or an M. C. Escher drawing of a hand that's drawing a hand that draws the hand that is drawing it, and so on. Many find this endlessly fascinating. Others find that once you've got the Concept there's no place much...