Docx's ambitious second novel, which won the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize and was long-listed for the Man Booker Prize in 2007, has a plot straight out of one of the 19th-century “three-decker” novels that the author obviously admires: a family assembling for a funeral; an illegitimate son in search of his birthright; a twin brother and sister, united in their hatred for their manipulative bully of a father; even a melodramatic twist at the end.

There are deliberate echoes, too, of the great Russian novelists in the novel's depiction of St Petersburg. Summoned to the city by his dying mother, Maria, Gabriel Glover, who runs a self-help magazine in South Kensington, arrives too late. But Maria's death forces him to confront his own situation. This is complicated, involving a job he hates and two girlfriends he is not sure that he loves. No less confused is his sister Isabella, arriving for the funeral from New York. Isabella blames their father, Nicholas - now living in Paris with his lover - for Maria's untimely demise.

Further interesting developments are promised by the appearance of Arkady, a brilliant but impoverished concert pianist, who claims to be Maria's son by an earlier liaison. The scenes involving Arkady and his heroin- addict friend Henry are the best in the book, with a gritty realism absent from the depiction of the self-obsessed Glover twins; although there is much else to enjoy in this compelling tale of secrets and lies.

Self Help by Edward Docx
Picador £7.99 Buy the book here

Explore Books

• Book Extracts

• Book Reviews

• Books Group

Times Recommends

• iD: The Quest for Identity in the 21st Century by Susan Greenfield
• David Fickling, saviour of the great British comic
• Universe of Stone: Chartres Cathedral and the Triumph of the Medieval Mind by Philip Ball