Granta 39: The Body

With novelists A. S. Byatt and Salman Rushdie and Waterstone's marketing director John Mitchinson, Granta editor Buford chose the ``best'' 20 British novelists under the age of 40 (see p. 81 for details on the controversy the list generated in England). Readers should approach this Granta issue as a smorgasbord of sorts: samples of fiction, essays and drama on a wide variety of themes are thrown together here, and while they are generally well-crafted and clever they are also frequently not the writers' most exciting efforts. Iain Banks's protagonist is a five-year-old boy who panics when his friend slips through the ice; Anne Billson's self-described ``born-again virgin,'' who hasn't had sex in years, finds herself pregnant; and, at 16, Esther Freud's heroine ``had tried every drug she had heard of. She was free to begin her own life.'' Helen Simpson depicts a harried young mother's feeling of self-obliteration; Jeanette Winterson reports on sex with her lesbian lover Picasso (``She rushes for me bull-subtle, butching at the gate as if she's come to stud.''); Hanif Kureishi probes the Beatles mystique; and Adam Mars-Jones's whacky, thrifty protagonist returns to the store the meat cleaver that her boyfriend used to slit his wrists. Photos not seen by PW. (July)