Best of 2010: books | Blotting paper

In fact, there is this incredible moment early in the book, just before the the Japanese attack a British vessel. Jim is watching from the window of his parents' suite at the Park Hotel; he begins to drum against the glass as if to signal to the soldiers on board. ... It was the invention of himself as narrator, that “Columbus' egg,” which enabled him to get over the mental block that until nearly forty years of age prevented him from moving beyond essays to fiction. ...