Uncle Rudolf by Paul Bailey

Here is a short novel that reaches far and deep. The subject is the decline of prewar Romania into fascism, but this is never spelt out. It is simply hinted as the backdrop to a single family tragedy: the Iron Guard in a train "with murder in his eyes", the men who take a pregnant girl into the woods, rape and murder her, a country that has become "beastly". Paul Bailey's skill is the compression of brutal years, and the anguish of many, into a handful of telling images. These fragments haunt the narrator, himself aged seven when his parents vanished from his life.

The story is like a shuffled pack of cards: nothing chronological, nothing sequential, and all the more resonant for that. Andrew Peters was once Andrei Petruscu. Occasionally, words and phrases from the old language swim into his head. Always, in his dreams, there surface the same searing episodes from a time reduced to those potent moments. In memory, every childhood becomes like that, but Andrew's is of another order, because he has nothing now to which to tether it. He is in another country, the crucial people are gone. Except for uncle Rudolf.

It's to uncle Rudolf, over in London, that his brother sends the small boy in 1937. Rudolph is a vibrant figure: a famous lyric tenor, exuberant, emotional, a magnet to women. In his care, Andrei becomes Andrew and grows into an English boy. He has an unsuccessful marriage and fathers a son. Rudolf gets rich and even more famous, his career spiralling off into operetta.

But the novel's structure is such that this narrative is released piecemeal, subsumed into the overriding concern which is the fate of Andrew's parents. In time, his uncle tells him what happened, and this sad truth is the driving force in Andrew's life, and the novel.

Rudolf inspires great affection ­ from his nephew, from his domestic staff, from the ladies who leap willingly into his bed. Much dexterity is required to bring off an allegedly charismatic figure, especially in a novel of such concision and economy. I have not had many dealings with central European opera singers, and I did find myself somewhat resistant to Rudolf's charms, but I also found him entirely credible.

His combination of bravura and melancholy is persuasive, along with the self-contempt he comes to feel during his decline into romantic hero roles in The Gypsy Baron and The Desert Song. He is rich and famous but not pleased with himself. Indeed, he comes to identify the mindless frivolity of operetta with the pernicious culture of his own country after its decline into bestiality. In old age, he develops a passion for Bartok, hearing in his music an echo of the old Romania.

The underlying story is sad ­ harrowing, indeed ­ but there is spicy humour here too. Andrew himself is an appealing narrator: honest, troubled, perceptive. It is the clarity of his vision that gives the novel its crisp and satisfying accuracy, and makes it one of Paul Bailey's best books.

Penelope Lively's new novel, 'The Photograph', is to be published in January; she will be appearing at the Cheltenham Festival on 12 October

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