26 NOVEMBER 1988, Page 40

Anita Brookner

I enjoyed nothing so much as The Letters of Edith Wharton (Simon & Schuster, £17.95), a tremendously vivid and very moving collection. I also liked two books of memoirs: Shusha Guppy's The Blindfold Horse (Heinemann, £10.95) and Richard Cobb's Something to Hold Onto (John Murray, £12.95). Curiously, none of the novels stayed with me. Instead I re-read Simenon (for that unmatched morbidity) and Pamela Hansford Johnson, whom I am anxious to see re-printed. One of her stories, The Last Resort, I consider to be a rare and exemplary document of women's fiction of the Fifties.