Women tend to write domestic novels, it’s sometimes claimed, while male authors are more likely to tackle “bigger” issues. For his fifth novel, as if taking aim at such gendered preconceptions, Andrew O’Hagan seems to have attempted one of each: a female-focused story, gentle, interior and elegiac, and a male narrative that could not be more ballsy. The central relationship is that of Luke Campbell, a literary-minded soldier, and his grandmother, 82-year-old Anne Quirk, a gifted former photographer. When the novel opens, Luke is still on a tour of duty in Afghanistan, and Anne is succumbing to dementia (a fashionable theme in fiction these days) and may have to leave her sheltered flat. Anne’s social circle is limited to her fellow residents, her carers and h