Jane Gardam
Old Filth

Don't judge this book by its title. The central character, 80-year-old former judge Sir Edward Feathers, is not in the least filthy. Handsome, well-mannered, impeccably dressed, and very rich, he has had a brilliant career; and he still commands respect from his juniors in the legal profession. Old Filth, his nickname, refers to his early life as a barrister in London, when briefs came slowly. He moved to Hong Kong where he flourished.

Hence the name FILTH: Failed In London Try Hong Kong.

Old Filth belongs to a long literary tradition in which the children of Empire, from the ranks of the colonisers as well as the colonised, look back in anger. Kipling's bitter autobiographical Baa Baa Black Sheep and Saki's murderous fantasy Sredni Vashtar cast shadows on the pages of Jane Gardam's skilful, compassionate novel. Old Filth is set mainly in England, with brief, vivid memories of pre-war Malaya. It could be read as a period piece about a vanished world but Gardam asks some uncomfortable questions that have resonance in any time and place.

Anita Brookner
Leaving Home

Some books are so wonderful that they give us the added pleasure of pressing them into friends' hands and insisting they read them, too. Sadly, the devoted fans of Anita Brookner's flawless novels don't know that pleasure. What, after all, would we say? "This story about inconsolable loneliness made me think of you -- enjoy!" She's published a novel almost every year since 1981, but the range of her audience seems as restricted as her themes. With Henry David Thoreau, she might wryly observe, "I have traveled much in Concord," having explored the whole universe in the narrow confines of a reserved, lonely heart.

Leaving Home, her new novel, does nothing to expand that realm, but those of us who love the exquisite agony of her scrutiny wouldn't have it any other way. This time around, her depressed but carefully behaved heroine is Emma Roberts, a graduate student listlessly working on a dissertation about 17th-century European gardens. Like so many despondent graduate students, she spends her days tinkering "with footnotes in an attempt to convince myself that this was a useful activity." At 26, Emma still lives at home with her mother, doesn't know what she's going to do with her life and has no promising romantic prospects.