A book that really demonstrates to me how great an author Lodge is. I was not expecting to enjoy this at all, since the subject matter (Henry James) didn't interest me and the genre (historical novelised biography) was similarly unattractive. But all my preconceptions were overturned. This was gripping, moving, entertaining and informative. Lodge's respect for James shines through, yet he is also clearly conscious of his failings and does an excellent job of letting us be aware of these even when his character is not. If I read him correctly (and I know nothing of James' work) he has, once again, adopted the style of his subject whilst writing about it. This is a psychological novel, short on dialogue. Only at the very end does Lodge allow his authorial voice to intrude. I'm very glad I've read this book, and it makes me want to know more about Henry James. In fact, I had to resist the temptation to find out all I could about him whilst reading the book; I was sure it would spoil my enjoyment of it. It was far more rewarding to discover Henry James through Lodge's eyes. ( )

This is something of a literary departure for David Lodge, who ditches the satire, the campuses and the Catholics in favour of this rather ponderous attempt at biographical fiction. The subject of the novel is Henry James (Lodge himself rather wryly comments in an afterword that he was pipped to the post by Colm Toibin, whose The Master (which I've not yet read) covers similar ground and was shortlisted for the 2004 Booker Prize).

Lodge deals with an unhappy period during James's life. By the 1890s, sales of his books were poor, his novels greeted mostly with indifference by public and reviewers alike. He decided to turn his hand to writing plays instead. However, his adaptation of his novel The American achieved only modest success, and Guy Domville was largely a disaster.

The emotional core of the novel concerns James's long and warm friendship with George Du Maurier. A talented artist, Du Maurier turned to drawing cartoons and illustrations when he lost the sight in one eye. Fearing that the other eye was failing, he decided to try his hand at writing a novel. His first novel met with some success, but it was his 1894 novel Trilby that made his name. Trilby achieved the kind of popular success Henry James could only dream about. To add insult to injury, Trilby (although adding the words trilby [hat] and Svengali to the English language) isn't that good. James had to deal with conflicting emotions - although pleased for his friend's success, it would hardly have been natural if he didn't feel a few pangs of envy as well. I wish Lodge had explored this in more detail and with a bit less caution.

I can't say I didn't enjoy this novel, but it doesn't entirely succeed. Lodge is very good on the insecurities and sensitivities of the writer, and what it's like for a writer who feels misunderstood by his audience. But really the major flaw is that this reads more like biography than fiction, with a sprinkling of conversations thrown in. The result is that the story itself seems curiously lifeless.

Lodge also seems squeamish about trying to get inside his character's head, falling back on writing facts instead of showing us what Henry James, the man (or his Henry James, at any rate) was really like, so the reader sees him almost at several steps removed - we peer through the window at him, but are never invited in. Lodge seems reluctant to go beyond the biographical details and make stuff up - but that's what novelists do! The best section of the book deals with Guy Domville's London premiere, where Lodge frees himself from the constrictions of biography and allows his novelist's voice to take over. [February 2008] ( )

Author! Author! tells the tale of Author Henry James. This book exists in a genre that many would consider limiting - its dramatic possibilities bound by a need to keep to recorded fact (although David Lodge stresses that many events are imagined, he records the differences between his events and recorded fact later in the novel). Even more difficult is the subject himself, whose posthumous blushes Lodge does not spare. Author! Author! should be a book which fails before a page is turned.

Despite such difficult starting points, the book manages to be an intellectual, satisfying read. Set in the late nineteenth century, the bulk of the story follows James's career as he attempts to become a playwright. During this time he comes into contact with names that were later to become the leading thinkers of the age. James himself is portrayed as pompous, self-absorbed and snobbish, a self-appointed judge of literature whose vanity and lumbering seriousness often make him ridiculous. Yet despite this, the portrayal of James is not without sympathy; Lodge may add some knowing smiles in the middle of James's brooding about his lack of success, but this is the closest the character gets to two-dimensional. Flawed and sensitive, James's stubborn elitism (however scathing in private) rarely becomes unkind words, and his self-righteous is tinged by a sneaking suspicion that he may just be right - and his own gloomy surveys of his own behaviour.

Author! Author! could never be a page-turner in the traditional sense, but as a gentle piece of intellectual nourishment it is a definite success. ( )