The Strangers' Gallery, by Jonathan Keates (Vintage, £6.99 in UK)

Set in Italy in the early 19th century, this novel inevitably summons up the ghost of Stendhal, and in fact Jonathan Keats has…

Set in Italy in the early 19th century, this novel inevitably summons up the ghost of Stendhal, and in fact Jonathan Keats has written a biography of him. A young upper-class Englishman, of a type fairly familiar from fiction if not from real life, encounters a young upper-crust Italian who is about to enter into an arranged marriage, as is usual with women of her class. It is more than boy-meets-girl, however, since convention and social realities are ineluctable in their demands, and politics enter in too. Keates seems wholly at home and at ease in this historical setting, which is not laid on with a trowel, and the young lovers themselves are convincing in their sincerity and relative ordinariness.