Self is not the only novelist this autumn to respond to commercially uncertain times by returning to Modernism – James Kelman's latest novel could have been written by Virginia Woolf – but he has been the most explicit about this strategy. His blurb not only suggests "he is taking up the challenge of Modernism", but states that only Modernism alone "can unravel new and unsettling truths about our world". He opens the novel with an epigraph borrowed from James Joyce. It's a bold claim, but Self has never lacked ambition. Umbrella ranges from 1918 to 2010, but Self writes...
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