Aftershocks

AN Wilson Atlantic €18.20 Set on an imaginary island in the wake of a devastating earthquake, Aftershocks is narrated by the gossipy Ingrid, a young student fascinated by the intense relationship between a female dean and a female classics don. Ingrid turns out to be the year’s least reliable narrator, and the novel may be a little too tricksy for lovers of more conventional fiction. But Aftershocks is crafted with great elegance and is fizzing with ideas, as Wilson zig-zags between Euripides, Christianity, sex and anthropology with an intellectual fluency few of his contemporaries could hope to match.