This extraordinary novel – shortlisted for the Booker prize in 1973 alongside books by Beryl Bainbridge, JG Farrell and Iris Murdoch – has been reissued on both sides of the Atlantic after being out of print for 50 years.
The story covers six months – “equinox to equinox” – in the affairs of narrator Hero Kinnoull, a bookshop owner in the English village of Beaudesert and the lover of Hugh Shafto. Hero’s devotion to Hugh seems unfathomable to the reader – he’s an outrageous snob, obsessed with the past, and devoted to the rococo largely because it “stands for everything the mob detests” – but that’s love for you.
