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Why do the review sections devote 2-3 months a year to “best of year” fillers? Are they really so short of new books that try to say something about the world we live in that yet again they feel this overwhelming urge to remind us about Julian Barnes, Amis and the latest undiscovered Mitford Sister?

Every year about now I turn to the weekend review supplements hoping to read about something new and instead get the usual list of best-selling fiction; the year’s "best" biographies; the winner of the Man Booker and so on. It’s the same every summer when they ask a load of famous authors who they’ll be taking on holiday and they all say the same thing: each other.

Hopefully 2012 will see a few changes: literary editors less in thrall to the multi-nationals, publishers who decide to take a few more risks, agents who make an effort to push new, original and radical perspectives, and maybe we writers could do our bit by producing challenging, relevant novels that offer something new.

“Fire Horses” was about England’s recent history; “Out of Office” about its present; and “emptiness” is about its future. The fact that neither of the first two has yet been reviewed in the nationals doesn’t mean they don’t exist; it just means people don’t know about them. Which makes me sad. Not for me, oh no: but for all those people out there who haven’t been given the opportunity to read them yet. Those poor, poor people...