Nineteen Twenty-One

Nineteen Twenty-One was the year of first publication of T S Eliot's The Waste Land, a year therefore with perhaps some resonance for a poet like Adam Thorpe; and Eliot has an off-stage part in this darkly humorous novel concerned with the failure of the creative process in the aftermath of a war no one thought would ever be topped for slaughter and destruction. Thorpe's fine observation of language and dialect is coupled with a sure touch when it comes to character in the thoughts of Joseph Monrow, an intense, and intensely self-absorbed, young would-be novelist, as he indulges himself in a good old-fashioned artistic struggle during the writing of his First World War opus. Joseph's great novel of the Great War seems motivated more by a cathartic desire for vengeance at his accidental gassing than by artistic principled rage; and sadly, for all his picturesque separation from the world in a Chiltern cottage, his novel isn't much cop. Offered the chance to visit for the first time the killing fields of Ypres, Joseph finds himself in distant pursuit of Tillie, a girl on a pilgrimage to honour her lost brother, and in a strange meeting with a mystical German woman who believes that an act of love will refresh and heal. Thorpe, as you'd expect, has none of Joseph's creative problems, and walks the tightrope of writing about writing with perfect balance. Review by ALEX BENZIE. Editor's note: Alex Benzie is the author of The Angle of Incidence. (Kirkus UK)