Are You With Me?, Stephen Foster, 2007: 0743275489 (Blackwell’s, amazon.com, amazon.co.uk).
I never expected one of my reviews to get a review, least of all a review from the author of the book I was reviewing. It was a good review, too: he said that mine was the best review he’d read, and he sent me a copy of his second novel as a way of saying ‘thank you’. At the time I thought that ‘best review’ meant ‘review penetrating deepest into the mind of the author and his intentions in creating the work’. I’m not so sure, now – he might just have meant ‘review that says the nicest things about me’ – but either way, I am in his debt to at least the extent of another review.
It took me a long time to get round to opening the book. Not just the sense of obligation, but a simple fear: would Stephen Foster, like Donna Tartt and Salley Vickers, be one of those authors who ought to have got run over before publishing their second novel?
