Distracting eccentrics

That Old Ace In The Hole by Annie Proulx (Fourth Estate, £16.99)

Proulx's novel is, in a sense, an act of preservation: a lovingly observed portrait of an oddball Texan panhandling community under threat from an agricultural industry intent on buying up land for hog farming.

Bob Dollar is sent to the teetotal town of Woolybucket to surreptitiously scout for sites but finds himself constantly distracted by the eccentric inhabitants and the stories they tell.

Such narrative distractions - startling and entertaining though they are - are also the novel's weakness: for all Proulx's fascination with character and story, the book lacks a sufficient overarching plot to drive the novel onwards.