I Am Sovereign
NICOLA BARKER
(william HEINEMANN, 224 PP, £12.99)
Tablet bookshop price £11.70 • Tel 020 7799 4064

Small, tasty and perfectly put together, the bonne bouche can often be the best part of a meal. This is certainly true of Nicola Barker’s new short novel, which follows two long works: one a virtual reality experiment, the other a quasi-biography of a nineteenth-century guru. Barker is said to be working on another big novel. However, her current exercise in displacement activity will delight both fans and new readers.

Four characters meet in Llandudno outside a house for sale: they are a bankrupt teddy-bear maker (the vendor), a mother and daughter (the viewers) and an estate agent.