Through Plate-Glass 
Ian Sansom
There are those who like to mortise a plot, carefully and neatly, and there are those who are content simply to bang it together with panel pins and a tube or two of Gripfill. Jonathan Coe is undoubtedly the craftsman – a counter-sinking, dove-tailing, professional-finishing kind of writer. But he does get away with the occasional bodge. The framing device for his new novel, The Rotters’ Club, for example, seems to be held together with two blobs of mastic, intended to provide a solid fixing onto a sequel.
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Ian Sansom’s novel, The Delegates’ Choice, the third in ‘The Mobile Library’ series, is out from Harper Perennial.
Other articles by this contributor:
Emotional Sushi · Tony, Nick and Simon
Very like St Paul · Johnny Cash
Happy Knack · Ian Sansom galoots with Betjeman
Smorgasbits · Jim Crace
‘I was there, I saw it’ · Ted Hughes
His Own Peak · Ian Sansom destroys John Fowles’s diary
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