The innocent child, eavesdropping on adults and adulteries, puzzled by half-heard conversations and half-understood hints, has a respectable history in fiction: What Maisie knew, The Go-Between, many other novels and stories. Such children are at the centre of William Trevor's tenth novel and David Profumo's first; or rather, Trevor seems to have chosen to place young Tom both centrally and peripherally (as children often are, in fiction and in life), while Profumo makes young James the very eyes and ears of his book, though distancing him by telling the tale in the third person.

LRB 23 June 1988 | PDF Download