Grand Days is volume one of Frank Moorhouse’s Palais des Nations novels, and is connected to the author’s previous works Forty-Seventeen and The Electrical Experience by the characters of Edith Campbell Berry and George McDowell. The principal narrative of Grand Days goes on for 500 or so pages, and is followed by some thirty pages of notes and explanations which form another narrative. The most interesting narrative of all, to me, however, is the story of where this book fits into the life and work of Frank Moorhouse.

One of the most irritating things a reviewer can do is say: well, here is this book, but I wish the author would write some other books on topics of the reviewer’s choice. But I must say that next, after all the Palais des Nations novels, I want to read the journals and the literary biography (autobiography?) of Frank Moorhouse. Tantalising pieces of these other desired books are to be found in the notes on the jacket of Grand Days and on the preliminary pages, and in the notes at the end.