Critical mass: A triumph for a literary gamekeeper turned poacher

FICTION: Upstate, By James Wood, Jonathan Cape, €17.25

Yes, that James Wood - as in, the critic James Wood. Chief book reviewer for the New Yorker. Professor of the Practice of Literary Criticism at Harvard. Author of How Fiction Works. Coiner of the term “hysterical realism” (to describe the information-glutted comedies of Jonathan Franzen and Zadie Smith). A famous critic in an age when nobody is famous for criticism. And – though it may...