THIS may not be the most promising way to begin a book review, but I should admit at the outset that I haven't exactly read the novel under discussion. Or rather, I read the first fifty pages and then gave up, having found nothing in the plot, the characters, or the style to warrant my reading seven hundred pages more. I feel it necessary to be as candid as possible about this because, as I hope to show, I believe a certain mendacity has surrounded the book's critical reception. For me ...