Hovering around the fringes of belief, she is not given to happy endings, which can make her books rather bleak.Lying fits the blueprint and takes as its big theme the deceit and hypocrisy that underpin otherwise idyllic relationships, and which Perriam paints as permeating our culture and institutions. Alison, a young publishing executive, falls for James, a former religious novice, because she believes him to be beyond reproach and incapable of telling anything but the truth. After their fairy-tale marriage, all twinkling candles and meringue dresses, she sets up an altar and worships him. As with all plaster saints, he is destined to crumble.Alison's unhealthy veneration and the cross of childlessness ultimately drive her to self-hate and so away from St James, who even manages to turn love-making into a religious ceremony. She tumbles into a series of tangled affairs, recounted with Perriam's other trademark: a graphic frankness and breathless gusto.

The poison that Alison's betrayal introduces into their comfortable married life brings it to crisis and, ultimately, displaces James from his pedestal.This is undoubtedly a deeply personal novel, as Perriam confirms in accompanying notes. Her own father trained for the priesthood before marrying and later lost his faith. And she too was told that she would never have children before going on to have what she regards as a "miracle baby". That element of autobiography, though carefully enmeshed with the plot and never self-indulgent, makes for some of Lying's most affecting and authoritative sections.As ever, the tragedy is to some extent mitigated by a fine line in black humour, not confined to the black condoms used by one of Alison's less subtle lovers. Perriam can be wickedly funny with her dialogue, in her off-the-cuff social observations and in sketching minor characters and their mannerisms. Her prose is breezy and might occasionally benefit from a little more scene-setting. But such stylistic foibles should not detract from an accomplished and intelligent novel, by a too often overlooked novelist who wears her seriousness of purpose lightly.Peter Stanford's biography of Bronwen Astor is published by HarperCollins.

Courttia Newland and and Kadija Sesay's collection of new black British writing reminds me of a messy delivery. Split into four genres - poetry, essays, memoirs and stories, which are rotated throughout - this massive book seeks both to catch the zeitgeist, and to give birth to the largest collection of writing yet from the second and third generations of British-born black people. The writers locate themselves at the end of the 20th century, and capture ground that allows them to sit more comfortably in Britain. The collection is therefore dominated by meditations on identity, and the search for a safe and nurturing "home". Courttia Newland and and Kadija Sesay's collection of new black British writing reminds me of a messy delivery. Split into four genres - poetry, essays, memoirs and stories, which are rotated throughout - this massive book seeks both to catch the zeitgeist, and to give birth to the largest collection of writing yet from the second and third generations of British-born black people.