SOURCE: “Gratification Deferred,” in Times Literary Supplement, December 3, 1993, p. 20.

In the following review of The Search, Clark finds shortcomings in the novel's muddled eclecticism and lack of “authorial presence.”

In his first novel, The Colour of Memory, Geoff Dyer set snapshots of his narrator's life against the structure of the minutes of an hour ticking away. Unsure of what was important and what was trivial, why these details have been selected and others excluded, the reader could only observe. The point was to disturb the story, to tell by showing, to mix it a little. One of the characters, a writer, expresses his contempt for conventional narrative: “I hate plots. Plots are what get people killed. Generally the plots are the worst things about books. … Plots are what you get on television. There's no need for them these days.”

Dyer warms to this theme in his second novel...