Banville's Recommendations

John Banville's swipe at McEwan's Saturday is still recalled; this year, however, either the quality of literature has risen dramatically, or the man has mellowed. Here he is on recent books that he's liked: "The finest novel I read this year is Richard Ford's The Lay of the Land...Ford has invented a new narrative style: allusive, funny, deceptively discursive. This is high art masquerading as middle-brow fiction; as such it is something entirely new...Martin Amis's House of Meetings is the best thing he has done yet, a harrowing tale that is also a moving story of love and loss."