Malcolm Bradbury's first novel Eating People Is Wrong had a well-deserved success as a witty examination of the liberal conscience in a middle-aged professor at a provincial university. His new book [Stepping Westward], which attacks the same theme from a different angle, is just as entertaining, with some truly hilarious moments, and a lot of very sharp observation. This time the hero, James Walker, is a wilting provincial writer, thirtyish, going to fat ('bird-eyed, balding' according to Time), with three 'promising' novels behind him and a yearning for spiritual revitalisation…. Much of the comedy of the book rises out of the hard job America has prodding open this inert, tweed-suited, non-car-driving limey into some semblance of assertion and commitment.

In one sense the attempt fails, since the hero returns home to his wife … without having completed his year, but in another sense he turns the tables on America...