Books in brief: The Predicament, Putting Myself Together and The History of Sound

The Predicament by William Boyd (Viking, £20)

William Boyd ensnares his travel writer/spy Gabriel Dax in a second instalment of double-agentry. In 1963, Dax is ensconced in rural Sussex, having left Chelsea for a quiet life of literary endeavour. It’s not long before his slow-burn feelings for his MI6 handler have him back in the harness, heading to Guatemala and then Berlin, embroiled in revolutionary politics and CIA meddling. A slick pace occasionally comes at the expense of depth. But if the book fails to live up to the genre’s highest aspirations, this is nevertheless stylish stuff, and Dax’s intermittent naivety feels compellingly credible.

Putting Myself Together: Writing 1974 – by Jamaica Kincaid (Picador, £20)

This career-spanning miscellany is comprised of elegant personal essays and cutting cultural criticism. Growing up a bright, bold girl on Antigua, Jamaica Kincaid was pulled out of education by her mother during her teens and sent to work as a nanny in America. Within a decade, she had been published in the New Yorker. The early pieces showcase a voice already distinctively her own, and binge-reading them now – it’s hard to resist – deepens themes that have proven sustaining, such as friendship, motherhood and gardening as well as race and colonialism.

The History of Sound by Ben Shattuck (Swift Press, £9.99)

New England is the backdrop to this sublime collection of lightly linked short stories that travel back as far as 1700s Nantucket and forwards into snowy New Hampshire woodland circa the present day. Six tales each come with a companion piece, set some time apart, in which a passing detail intriguingly illuminates its forebear. Thoughts on love, loss, music and memory are delicately probed, but the collection’s heart belongs to human creativity and its lasting resonance, whether in a folk song, a still life, or an imaginatively grafted apple tree.

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