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The third novel, "The Colonel and Judy O'Grady," takes us further afield still, to the foothills of the Himalayas, where two exile communities bump up against each other: the "strange and pathetic group, known, collectively, as the Ancient Britons," left behind by her Majesty's retreating Empire and Tibetan monks fleeing religious persecution. Stevenson, bless her, is alive to the absurdities of the situation: "The shaven heads and the Panama hats met periodically in the bazaars, like animals at a watering-hole, with an entire lack of mutual curiosity." The final story, "Crossing the Water," sets in motion a wild Feydeau-ian farce involving three art historians and a manly soldier in a Suffolk country house. Despite her diverting fictional globetrotting, maybe Stevenson had better stay at home in future: this last story is a corker. The farce is hilarious, the denouement heart-wrenching. But what's most wonderful is the knowing tone. The narrator observes of his art-historian friend: "Adam knew, of course; his omniscience was legendary. I sometimes scrounge dinner with some friends in Hampstead who keep a list of things he doesn't know: it is short, and peculiar." Fans of the shifty narrations of Francine Prose, John Lanchester, and Michael Frayn will find much to love in this new voice. --Claire Dederer
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