The private life of a high-living author

David Lodge wants us to share his fascination with H.G. Wells. Photo / Supplied

H.G. Wells? Wasn't he the guy who wrote that Tom Cruise movie?

Indeed, the prolific, protean author (and prophet and philanderer) has dwindled into some obscurity since his death. But now comes David Lodge's biographical novel, which starts with Wells' last years, in his Blitz-battered house on the outskirts of Regent's Park, fretting over the same anticipated eclipse.

Most of the 550-plus pages then take us back several decades. We read of Wells' "hundred-odd books, his thousands of articles", plus his literary rejections, rapturous or rancid reviews, his unease about the reputations of Henry James and Arnold Bennett.

As always, Lodge writes lucidly and elegantly. This time though, he doesn't wear his research so lightly. He's fascinated, and wants us to be equally fascinated, by Wells' habit of keeping a notebook in the lavatory; by the clash with Orwell; the interviews with Lenin and Stalin; the professional cricketer father; the obsession with toy soldiers - and many, many other details, individually intriguing but cumulatively clogging.

Even the sex scenes - and I'm sure every reviewer has noted how the parts of Wells which most preoccupy Lodge seem to be private parts - are packed with details of wallpaper, stays and the weather outside.

Other characters in the story share the author's astonishment at how a man "not especially good-looking, only five feet five in height and tending to corpulence", with a voice that rises to a high-pitched squeak, could have proved so irresistible to so many women. Apparently he was "frisky" in bed. Yes, well ... He wasn't much interested in love, but women gave him the chance "to discharge his excitement in a bout of passionate copulation". Yes, not so well ...

Those women were nearly all astonishingly forbearing - and in a few cases, child-bearing.

They comprised a cousin, other writers (Elizabeth von Arnim and Rebecca West among them), students, including a New Zealander and a daughter of Edith Nesbit, plus a double-figure supporting cast.

The story is interspersed with invented interviews, between Wells and a voice "friendly, sometimes challenging, sometimes neutrally enquiring".

It's a clever way of changing perspective, and it brings out the pathos of an old man mislaying his dentures, taking down his books to see if they still read well (they don't), hearing people make arrangements for him behind half-closed doors.

Wells emerges as selfish, resolute, smug, vulnerable. He was a novelist who disliked the form; a high-living socialist; a romantic with an accountant's streak. Lodge sets out his contradictions stylishly and sympathetically.

As a survey of the literary and political worlds of early 20th century England, A Man Of Parts is always engaging and informative. As a novel, it flares and flickers, frequently ignites and, just occasionally, splutters.

David Hill is a Taranaki writer.