14 AUGUST 1999, page 37

Time, Memory, Love

Patrick Skene Catling THE HORIZONTAL INSTRUMENT by Christopher Wilkins Doubleday, £10, pp. 272 T he narrator of this marvellous novel, Robert Garrett, is a mathematical prodigy......

Mad

north- Nicholas Fearn LOSING NELSON by Barry Unsworth Hamish Hamilton, £15.99, pp. 320 I n fiction as in life, the insane can make tedious companions. Yet the story of a madman......

Getting Away With It

Thomas Karshan A FRIEND LIKE HARVEY by Teresa Waugh Gollancz, £16.99, pp. 223 Everyone has their Harvey — a person whose charm lies in their hopeless self- mythologisation,......