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Sat 07 Jul 2007Handling the truthFictionEven when recognising the imperative to at least pretend to be beyond both critical fright and personal prejudice, the book reviewer may at some point have to face a bête noir that is sure to incite self- defensive dread: sheer piles of pages. The novel, it seems, has been particularly beastly to the reviewer in this regard. It is the genre that above all others regularly elicits the but-life-is-too-short remonstration. Though reviewing is not an area of writing generally steeped in self-reflection, some great literary reviewers, who usually move cockily or blithely between the piles, have on occasion stopped to reflect in horror."The reviewing of novels", moaned Cyril Connolly, is "the white man's grave of journalism: it corresponds, in letters, to building bridges in some impossible tropical climate . . . for each scant clearing made among the springing vegetation the jungle overnight encroaches twice as far. A novel reviewer is too old at thirty; early retirement is inevitable."