It is difficult to write a life-affirming novel nowadays: too much is known about the tawdriness and shams of almost all levels of society, and a novel that does not have a social context is exposed to the sterilising rays of subjectivity. It is J. P. Donleavy's great achievement to have created both a style of writing and a subject-matter [in The Destinies of Darcy Dancer, Gentleman] that are exuberantly in praise of life, and yet not too fantastical to seem true….

J. P. Donleavy's last book was the extremely funny The Unexpurgated Code: A Complete Manual of Survival and Manners: this new novel is an even funnier (and much more touching) illustration of this code. It is picaresque in that it rambles on in the manner of some 18th-century novel about rogues: sometimes its extravagances drop over into the realm of fantasy. But what seem to me...