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FICTION:Summertime,. By JM Coetzee, Harvill Secker, 266pp, £17.99

ONLY THE GREAT JM Coetzee would write an autobiography such as this; only the great Coetzee would continue his autobiography- as-fiction like this, with a book written in the form of a biography being researched about him after his death. This is the third instalment of a life so reserved, so repressed, so seething with polite rage and restrained despair that it could only be approached through a third-person voice, and here that voice is further distanced by the services of an earnest biographer complete with tape recorder. Coetzee is writing the story of a man who has lived his life in his head and at a distance from people. It is wonderful stuff. But then, Coetzee is wonderful; edgy, black, remorselessly human, witty, and often outright funny.