To make it as a writer, you should find one thing you’re good at. As someone who has written a memoir, a novel and, now, a history book, it’s a rule I’ve failed to follow. And no one makes me feel better about my lack of focus, or magpie mind, than Francis Spufford, whose nonfiction has encompassed everything from polar exploration to postwar Soviet economics. His first novel,
Golden Hill, might be my favourite fiction from the past decade; this new one, which follows five Londoners from the second world war to 2009, is just as unpredictable, original and true.