[In] so far as we are concerned with the overall style or structure of G, one notices that Mr Berger attempts to translate Cubism into literary terms by employing and rather overtaxing many of the devices used in recent years by Sarraute, Sollers, Butor and the other novelists who have said farewell to naturalistic certainty and divinely certified mimesis. Mr Berger's entire narrative is broken up into hundreds of double-spaced sections, some of them constituting only a single line or phrase, thus deliberately exposing the hiatus between conception and achievement. The gear shift in which he moves from "he" to "I" to "you" is so well greased as to be virtually automatic. This is alienation with a vengeance.

With increasing frequency Mr Berger imposes himself on his own story. Turning the page, one may suddenly come across a personal dream having no direct bearing on the action, or...