THIS enormous novel is a nightmare to review, but one must try. Forgive the direct approach: if you keep reading you may understand.It is set in Pett Level, a village “in the approaches” to Hastings, in 1982. There are two main narrators: Mr Franklin D. Huff, a visiting American, and Miss Carla Hahn, whose cottage is gradually falling into the sea. Also addressing us is a furious female parrot called Teobaldo and an endearing man called Clifford, who leaps from the pages with his complaints about Nicola Barker herself, the “mean cow of an Author”, who has had the nerve to win prizes with her ridiculous earlier books.As for plot, well. It is hard to pin it down, but it seems to centre on the grave of Orla, a saintly child, damaged by thalidomide, who died 13 years e