Upstate

By James Wood Jonathan Cape, 240pp, £14.99

James Wood is an English-born, American-based critic working for the New Yorker. His novel, like his life, straddles northern England and the US, and is set across six wintry days in upstate New York. Alan Querry, a property developer, has flown there with one daughter to visit another. Helen, a record company executive, arranges the trip because she is worried about Vanessa, who teaches philosophy. Van, who has been mentally fragile before, recently broke her arm in a mysterious fall. Is she OK? And is her new younger lover good for her? Wood’s insightful novel is short but deep, possessing the openness of a short story. His characters have lived before you meet them – the “girls” have had a troubled childhood thanks to an acrimonious divorce and the early death of their mother – and they live on after the last page. The writing is beautiful, the location snow-crunchingly real, and a note of menace thrums as Alan is momentarily born again in the company of his grown-up children.