Adam Mars-Jones writes:

Serena Frome (the pronunciation of her name, Froom, poshly at odds with its spelling), both intelligent and beautiful, is the daughter of a bishop. Originally her gift is for maths, a subject she finds easy, though she is also a compulsive reader of fiction. Urged to take her talent further by her unassertive mother in a rare moment of push, she studies maths at Cambridge. The experience is a dead end for her academically, her mathematical powers showing up as modest in this unsparingly competitive context, but other options open up thanks to her affair with an older man, a history don. After graduation she is recruited by MI5, and in due course joins an operation called Sweet Tooth, which discreetly channels secret funds to writers who can be expected, without actual manipulation and in ignorance of the source of subsidy, to promote suitable values. Most are writers of non-fiction, but it’s Serena’s job to recruit a short-story writer with real potential as a novelist. The choice falls on T. H. (Tom) Haley.

(LRB 13 September 2012)

Cape | Hardback 336 pp. |ISBN: 9780224097376