Gilbert Adair is probably best known for his writing in several national magazines and newspapers (including The Guardian, The Telegraph, and Esquire), especially the weekly "Scrutiny" column he wrote for the The Sunday Times between 1992 and 1996. His most widely acclaimed achievement is his brilliant, highly inventive translation of Georges Perec's lipogrammatic novel La Disparition (1969)--the novel with no es--as A Void (1994). His reputation as a writer of original fiction rests mainly on four short novels written since 1988. The same contemporary culture that he observed acidly in the lines of "Scrutiny" provides the backdrop and the motivation for his compulsive characters. The single protagonists of these novels follow their obsessions to their inexorable conclusions, however absurd or pathetic. Adair wrote too indulgently for some early reviewers' tastes because he insisted on taking his characters through to a bitter and often unsympathetic end. His novels have met with increasing...