A perfect marriage between MacLaverty and the novel

‘The novel,” said the poet and critic Randall Jarrell, “is a prose narrative of some length that has something wrong with it.” And almost all novels do have something wrong with them: dead patches, boring bits, lapses of talent or taste.

Readers, as a rule, don’t mind this: it’s part of the unspoken contract that pertains whenever you open a novel. But most writers mind it very much. Think of Gustave Flaubert, who ...