Snowleg is a hard slog

Snowleg by Nicholas Shakespeare, Harvill Press, £16.99

This latest novel from the author of The Dancer Upstairs is an ambitious tale.

English schoolboy Peter learns on his 16th birthday that his real father was an East German political prisoner his mother had known for just one night. He embarks on a journey of self discovery to a fractured Germany and ends up betraying a woman he knows only as Snowleg.

Peter's ongoing search for these two shadowy figures is the impetus for the rest of the book but, despite Shakespeare's loving evocations of the Germanys of then and now, it's hard to maintain an interest in two such necessarily insubstantial characters. Nearly 400 pages ends up feeling like a long slog.