EIGHT MONTHS ON GHAZZAH STREET: Hilary Mantel

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She has only constantly changing rumours to hang on to, and no one with whom to share her creeping unease. The answers to all the questions that beset you are not in facts, which are the greatest illusion of all, but in you own heart, in your own habits, in your limitations, in your fear.

Andrew, a civil engineer, and Frances met and married in Africa but come to Jeddah- -a place of blinding heat, ugly buildings, and underlying menace- -when Andrew accepts a job with an international construction company. The portrayal of this culture in Mantel's novel is enough to turn the biggest fan of multiculturalism into a raving advocate for the mission civilatrice of the West. Anyway, I stopped reading this book about one third of the way through as I felt it wasn't worth spending any more time on such narrow people.The East is portrayed as mysterious and secretive as opposed to the intrusive and nosy Western expats. Frances and Yasmin become friends, more because there is little alternative, though they later become friends with Samira, the wife of the Arab man Frances is not allowed to speak to.

It tells the story of an Englishwoman, Frances Shore, who moves to Jeddah, Saudi Arabia to live with her husband, an engineer. Nearly 30 years on from its original publication, Hilary Mantel's third novel is still as disturbing, incisive and illuminating as ever. A large part of the pleasure of reading the book is the virtuosity with which she controls the crescendo.She is supposed to be a professional woman who spent many years in Africa, so you would expect more interesting social and cultural commentary than was offered up in her "diary.