After having read [Winter Garden] attentively, and yet without achieving total understanding, I went back and combed the text for vital clues. But they still eluded me….

Artistically, it's of small consequence because the book doesn't depend on plausibility of plot for any appreciable part of its achievement. It is a phantasy in which the Kafkaesque strangeness and the Waughian (isn't it time a pronounceable adjective like Wavian were adopted?) humour reside in the fine structure of Beryl Bainbridge's idiosyncratic prose.

Three British artists, of nebulous artistic allegiance and achievement, and Ashburner, an 'admiralty solicitor', tour Russia as guests of the 'Soviet Artists' Union'….

The book begins: 'One morning early in October, a man called Ashburner …' This seems a deliberate echo of the 'man called K' in Kafka's masterpiece The Trial…. But the truth is Beryl Bainbridge is not really a Kafkaesque author. Her mind attaches itself to the concrete and she is always splendid on, for example, details of clothing. She lacks the allegorical organising power, as well as the metaphysical vision, of Kafka. She doesn't naturally see the world as a spiritual labyrinth in which destiny is always arbitrary and often ghastly.

Her imagination is, however, dominated by a vein of anarchic, surreal humour….

In addition to robust wit and verbal knockabout, Miss Bainbridge occasionally ejects lyrical insights which, in their abrupt appearance, resemble those flashes of joy which occur at the most unlikely times and which, in life as in art, redeem the prosaic….

Miss Bainbridge is in a transitional phase, moving away from the solid naturalism of early works like The Dressmaker, which contained only hints of mischief and fancy, towards a multifaceted play of the imagination. There are dangers in this. The present book evokes scene vividly but impressionistically. It is no longer rooted in felt experience. But the potential rewards are huge. Once she has left the Kafkaesque mode behind her, she should soon achieve full mastery of what now looks like an essentially lyrical and humorous talent. We can confidently expect wonders once the conquest is complete.