The Young Pretender
MICHAEL ARDITTI
(ARCADIA, 192 PP, £12.99)
Tablet bookshop price £11.69 • tel 020 7799 4064

Michael Arditti’s latest novel is the fictional memoir of William Betty, the child actor whose brief career on the Regency stage was one of the wonders of the age. But at the age of only 21, Mister Betty, as he now insists on calling himself, is a has-been struggling to make a comeback. His memory of his early years, playing Hamlet and Richard III at the age of 13, and the attention of the critics and the crowds, is incomplete, and this is the first warning to the reader that Betty, telling his own story, is an unreliable narrator who is trying to piece things together for his own benefit as much as ours.