Guardian Review

In this three-hander with walk-on character roles, Barnes returns to Oliver, Stuart and Gillian, the love-crossed trio who appeared in the earlier Talking It Over . Barnes, as an unseen interviewer, draws them to separately relate their version of events. As with a good docu-soap, the real revelations come through what is not said. Oliver expects you to remember where Talking It Over left off; Stuart and Gillian fill in the gaps. Once up to speed, a new turn of the wheel in the two men's rivalry over Gillian begins. Barnes's prose is without blemishes, but his mid-life, middle-class characters are stuck in dilemmas and attitudes that now seem dated. Norwegian Wood, by Haruki Murakami (Harvil, pounds 6.99) There are plenty of clues to help you place Murakami's story of a young man's sentimental education. The narrator, Toru Watanabe, a student of German at a Tokyo university, carries a copy of Thomas Mann's The Magic Mountain when he visits his emotionally disturbed girlfriend in a mountain sanatorium; "Don't tell me you're trying to imitate that boy in The Catcher in the Rye ," her roommate accuses; and he bonds with a fellow student over a shared obsession with The Great Gatsby . Torn between the fragile Naoko and down-to-earth Midori, Watanabe is piloted gracefully and humorously across the hyper-real cusp between adolescence and adulthood. Armed with Madness, by Mary Butts (Penguin, pounds 7.99) Virginia Woolf disliked her perfume, but Jean Cocteau became a friend; she drank with Hemingway, and cooked up opium poppies from her Cornish garden. Mary Butts was on the edge of modernism, a footnote to Bloomsbury whose work fell out of print. First published in 1928, this, her second novel, is redolent with unease and shadowed by the first world war. Set in the Dorset home of brother and sister Felix and Scylla, it revolves around the discovery of an ancient cup and its effect on their guests. Mysticism, psychoanalysis and a suspicion of the new are touched upon in this edgy, curious distillation of contemporary sensibilities. Shopgirl, by Steve Martin (Phoenix, pounds 6.99) No excuses are needed for Martin, actor and New Yorker contributor: he is an able writer whose tone is sympathetic and wise. The shopgirl is Mirabelle, glove saleswoman at a Beverly Hills store. In a city where appearances are augmented and egos impregnable, Mirabelle is a little girl lost. Consolation comes through her cat, her art and a psychiatrist's prescription, until Ray Porter - older, richer and more worldly - passes by her counter. Martin points out the snakes and ladders in the relationship between wealth and beauty, physical and emotional need. The characters may be archetypes and the plot slender, but Shopgirl is a likable light read. Caption: article-Fiction.1 In this three-hander with walk-on character roles, [Julian Barnes] returns to Oliver, Stuart and Gillian, the love-crossed trio who appeared in the earlier Talking It Over . Barnes, as an unseen interviewer, draws them to separately relate their version of events. As with a good docu-soap, the real revelations come through what is not said. Oliver expects you to remember where Talking It Over left off; Stuart and Gillian fill in the gaps. Once up to speed, a new turn of the wheel in the two men's rivalry over Gillian begins. Barnes's prose is without blemishes, but his mid-life, middle-class characters are stuck in dilemmas and attitudes that now seem dated. - Isobel Montgomery.