Three Brothers: A Novel
You might know Ackroyd primarily as a biographer of  literary masters, including Charles Dickens and  T. S. Eliot. But back in the 1980s, Ackroyd’s novels (Hawksmoor, etc.) were all the rage. His new novel is a strange, minimalist work of fiction set in midcentury London that lightly traces the lives of the Hanway brothers, all born on the same day at the same time, several years apart. The eldest is Harry, a soulless Fleet Street newspaperman investigating a political scandal. The middle brother is Daniel, a prickly academic who moonlights as a criminal accomplice in Soho. And the youngest, Sam—unquestionably the novel’s highlight—is an opaque drifter who wanders the streets and gives his money to vagabonds. One brother quickly drifts into madness, wrought beautifully by Ackroyd’s haunting prose: he speaks to nuns who aren’t there, visits churches that disappear, and sees visions of moving stones. There’s no high-concept premise, no suspenseful turns of plot, other than the mystery of the Hanways’ mother and a few fateful intersections, but the crisp narrative is worth a read for Ackroyd’s poetic flourishes and the images and atmospheres he conjures from London’s dark streets. --Adam Morgan