THE HEARTS OF MEN

by Nickolas Butler (Picador £12.99)

THIS sumptuous, desperately sad novel is just the thing to lose yourself in on a soporific beach holiday. Over the course of several decades, it scrutinises the hearts of four men: Nelson, who we first meet as a lonely teenager, his friend Jonathan, who is popular and confident, Jonathan’s son Trevor and Trevor’s son Thomas.

Linking their stories is the scout camp at Camp Chippewa, where, as a young boy, Nelson starts to grasp the complexities of masculine behaviour and where, in later years, he takes over as scout master, even though boys of Thomas’s generation would much rather be on their phones than learning orienteering.

War, sex, marriage, what it means to prove yourself or to fail: Butler maps out with a deceptively light touch a violent, tragic and rich landscape of modern manhood through his characters’ unfolding fortunes, while also exploring what competing ideas about being a man invariably mean for the women caught in their slipstream. Tremendously good.