The Slowworm’s Song

Andrew Miller Sceptre £18.99

Recovering alcoholic Stephen Rose is tormented by something that happened in Belfast when he was a British soldier, decades ago. When he receives a letter inviting him to appear before a commission, he starts pouring his story into a writing pad for the benefit of his adult daughter. As a framing device, this has a distancing effect that makes the narrative curiously flat. Miller thinks of this as a companion piece to his previous novel, Now We Shall Be Entirely Free, but that book had a tension and drama lacking here.