THE ART OF OMISSION SEEMS TO BE UNfashionable in fiction these days. Word-bloat and page-plumping are the literary crises of our age. It’s not hard to see where this might come from. First, there is the same misguided view of value for money that leads to swollen typefaces and longer page counts to make books thicker than ever.
Second, there appears to be a decreasing appetite among editors and publishers for stretching readers, for risking the casual browser bailing early because they don’t immediately “get” the book. Yet the benefits of allowing the readers to do some of the thinking for themselves are obvious: a reader who is a participant rather than simply a bystander will be more engaged with the work. So this month’s column offers some novels that still dare to leave the reader’s hand unheld — without, it must be accepted, universal success.
Welsh writer Carys Davies’s third novel follows her previous books and into travel quests and into been attracted to loners and explorers: followed a settler across the American midwest (“I have to go. I have to go and see. That’s all I can tell you”), while followed a convalescing English librarian into contemporary India.
