Jennifer Johnston’s fifteenth novel sounds in synopsis like a thriller, but instead she plays this as a blackish comedy about some not-always-likeable people. (Well, look at the title and don’t say you weren’t warned.) The novel seems something of a departure and experiment for Johnston, and an encouraging sign that many of the best writers improve with age and instead of retreading old ground try to find fresh approaches.

‘Foolish Mortals’ is one of Johnston’s longest novels. Though as she is a writer of the one-inch-of-ivory school rather than the creator of loose baggy monsters, such things are relative: she packs a lot into 250 pages, at my estimate around 70,000 words. The novel is divided into four sections - itself a departure for the author, whose novels are usually chapterless - and is set during the run-up to Christmas and ending on the day itself, Johnston expertly marshals a large cast of characters, all of whom are “foolish” in their own way. The result is certainly ambitious and I’m not convinced it all comes off. Jeremy, who is now in a sexual relationship with Henry, used to play cross-dressing games with his sister. There’s an implication she may not have existed at all. (Although Johnston is primarily a realist, there is a precedent for this: ‘Two Moons’ has an angel among its cast, who could be either real or a figment of an elderly woman’s imagination.) Some of the novel’s puzzles are left unresolved at the end.

However, what you have come to expect from a Johnston novel is still there: the ear for dialogue and the sharp observation of her cast of characters. Her prose has a distinctive, at times almost stichomythic rhythm, longer paragraphs interspersed with those made up of a single sentence or even a word. The effect is of a spare beauty, without any waste.

It’s nearly thirty years since Johnston won the Whitbread (‘The Old Jest’, 1979) and exactly thirty since her one and only Booker nomination to date (for ‘Shadows on Our Skin’). So while she has continued to produce novels at a steady rate and has her devoted admirers - Roddy Doyle recently named her the greatest living Irish novelist - there’s a sense that she is somewhat taken for granted. ‘Foolish Mortals’, though not entirely successful, shows that at the age of seventy-seven Jennifer Johnston is certainly not resting on her laurels.

Gary Couzens was born in 1964 and lives and works in Aldershot. He has had twenty short stories accepted by F&SF, Interzone, The Third Alternative, Peeping Tom and other magazines, plus a large number of articles and reviews in The British Fantasy Society Newsletter, Zene and elsewhere. He has three novels in varying stages of completeness and has just started his fourth.