A RIGHT ROYAL FACE-OFF

Simon Edge (Lightning Books)

With a glance at this scrapbook-style cover, you might feel apprehension towards A Right Royal Face-Off. Maybe even a bit of pretention. Well, that’s exactly the type of thing Simon Edge is satirising here. A collage of old and new, it gets the kind of balance that can only be mastered in a novel about rival painters in the 18th century and modern TV people at a wannabe-haughty antique show trying to figure out whether the battered painting that just arrived is, as it is claimed to be, a Thomas Gainsborough, one of England’s greatest portrait artists. The more of Simon Edge you read, the more you realize that every element of his stories is hand-selected and glued to the bigger picture – it’s whimsical, farce-like… scrapbook-y, in the best possible way.

Price: £8.99. Info: www.eye-books.com

words Megan Thomas