James Salter

All That Is, the last novel by the late James Salter has a very distinctive tempo. It is full of apparent non sequiturs, it ranges this way and that, it has a jaunty and choppy rhythm but always finds its centre. James Salter is  a master of the sentence - his prose is lean like Hemingway's and rich and evocative like Fitzgerald's -  he conjures moods and atmospheres in a few lines of simple dialogue. It is a great cosmopolitan and glamorous but patrician and understated New York novel.

Craving French Lit

Every once in a while I have a craving for French literature. Jean d' Ormesson was a new discovery. Au Plaisir de Dieu I read slowly, in the morning bath, savouring the established rhythm of the prose, heir to the classical tradition, the rich vowels of the language, the fine evocation of a glorious France now largely gone. Michel Houellebecq's Soumission - a weak effort, repulsive and attractive at the same time, as is generally the case with Houellebecq - I browsed quickly through, looking for the occasional clinical sex scene and for quick insights into the perennial French malaise. Patrick Modiano, who won the Nobel prize, is a more distinctive, elegiac voice - he gives you a kind of seedy France, where crimes are committed and swept under the rug.