David Lodge’s latest novel opens in 1944 as London is being hit by the Blitz and H.G. Wells – once but no longer the most famous writer in Britain – discovers he has cancer. Approaching death evokes in Wells an internal interviewer, who draws out his life story: a rise from poverty to great popular and financial success as an author, renown for his idealistic political views, scandal for his sexual mores and acclaim as an originator of science fiction that endured even as his popularity faded.

Wells is ripe for fictionalisation and Lodge makes the most of him, skilfully weaving original material (letters between Wells and Henry James are a highlight) and excerpts from Wells’s books into invented scenes. Wells’s writing and his womanising share the focus, both shown in their complexity. On one level a literary hack, churning out everything from pot-boilers to political polemics and social comedies, Wells’s incisive imagination was early to explore the possible impacts of science on humanity and foresaw the rise of tank warfare and atomic power. His deep beliefs in sexual freedom and emancipation for women conveniently allowed him to seduce highly intelligent, beautiful, occasionally very young women, often with the knowledge and sometimes the support of his second wife, Jane. With two of these women – Amber Reeves and Rebecca West – he had children. His behaviour raised eyebrows then, as it may still for different reasons.

In the unseen questioner, Lodge has found an effective way of disrupting Wells’s point of view. Without hammering retrospective judgement home, the device draws attention to Wells’s egotism, selfishness and blindness to the effects of his actions on others, particularly the women in his life and his children. More subtly, these traits are also hinted at through the gently humorous storytelling. It’s an involving, enjoyable depiction of the writer’s life. The background, a familiar one peopled with the eccentric British literary and socialist elite of the late Victorian and Edwardian years, is also entertaining. But still: I would have liked to have seen more of Jane.

Ann Standish is a freelance reviewer.