Sir Victor has, throughout his long career as a reviewer and critic, been able to find and describe accurately what he calls, in The Living Novel, 'the new point in life from which any given novel started.' He likes to take the great, the outstanding, the enduring book and isolate the qualities that make it so. If biography helps, he tells us what we need to know; if political or cultural history is more useful, we have that; if perfectly chosen examples of style and pace are required, he provides them. He is supremely tactful, and never superfluous.

The Myth Makers contains essays on European, Russian and South American novelists: the title comes from the essay on Gabriel Garcia Marquez, whose quality as a myth maker is succinctly defined as a capacity to depict

the inordinate character—not necessarily a giant or saga-like hero, but someone who...