Anita

When I first started putting together notes for a novel (the 'main' one I have in mind, not the limbering up exercises) my thought was to make it an episodic set of short stories based around the same characters in the same world. I was reminded of this over the past couple of days as I have read "Anita" by Keith Roberts which is a collecting of individual stories initially published in the late nineteen sixties.

I have read a reasonable amount of Roberts' writing before and have always enjoyed it but Anita is something else and I like it as much, if not more, than much of the material for which he is rightly remembered. What struck me immediately was the economic precision of the writing and the amount which was left to inference rather than description or exposition.

I have recently been reading some weighty modern fantasy novels which have passed the time agreeably enough without ever really gripping me. In one or two, the early chapters were so concerned with world-building that it was hard to discern a story. There is none of that with Roberts: there is enough to spur the reader's imagination but in essence we are straight in with story and character and I find that very refreshing.