Double Blind
EDWARD ST AUBYN
(HARVILL SECKER, 256 PP, £18.99)
Tablet bookshop price £17.09 • tel 020 7799 4064

I have rarely so much enjoyed a novel in which such a lot is said and so little happens. Edward St Aubyn’s Double Blind is an impressive foray into the edgelands of art and science. Turn to a random page, and you may be fooled into believing it the most eloquent of scientific textbooks. St Aubyn is concerned with genetics, what makes people who they are, do what they do and suffer how they suffer. The wryly named YouGenetics company – run by megalomaniac businessman Hunter – tells us all we need to know about St Aubyn’s personal anxieties regarding biotech.