The Other Side of You, Salley Vickers, (Fourth Estate, £14.99)

Like Vickers's previous work, Miss Garnet's Angel, this muses on themes of literature, psychology and religion, and through a sumptuous and touching narrative offers readers a chance to play the part of listener in a carefully orchestrated overture of heartbreak in motion.

This time, however, the motif of painter Carravaggio and a dose of theoretical physics act as foils to the unravelling lives of the novel's many characters.

The story follows Dr David McBride, an unassuming but perceptive London psychiatrist, through a period of significant upheaval in his life.

From the art galleries of London to the streets of Rome, we follow his journey from apparent contentedness in a passionless marriage to mindful satisfaction in unrequited but heartfelt love.

Playing safely into the hands of her readership, Vickers's David is an utterly sensitive and inoffensive man whose unfortunate series of crises seem, at moments, a little too convenient to carry much empathic significance. Nonetheless, the burgeoning relationship between McBride and attempted-suicide Elizabeth Cruikshanks is handled with such demure sensitivity that it is possible to forgive the author her apparent taste for melodrama.

A generous imparting of both solid fact and conventional wisdom gives the text a richness and depth that distinguishes it from many in its genre.

With Vickers's fourth novel she has once again chosen to daub her canvas with a palette often mixed in contemporary fiction.

That her books remain as fresh and colourful as this is evidence of her strength as a writer. Highly recommended.