John Updike described himself as the sorcerer’s apprentice. Who today delivers the most magic in their prose?
E Crawford, Beijing

Amanda Craig, novelist and critic, whose most recent book is The Lie of the Land
Magic may be evoked in many ways and Updike did it both in the sense of mixing the mundane with the supernatural (The Witches of Eastwick) and in conjuring contemporary fiction whose realism is threaded through with hypnotic lyricism (the Rabbit novels, Couples, etc).

If you are looking for the supernatural, Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials channels the majesty of Milton and the enchantment of CS Lewis. In his multiverse, the anguish of witches who love mortal men, the ferocious joy of fighting and hunger, fear, love and protectiveness experienced by two children on the verge of adolescence are powerfully conveyed in the direct, exact prose of a master.

Another gorgeously sorcerous writer is AS Byatt. Her descriptions of Victorian England in Possession, and her short stories, are saturated with sensuous intelligence; even when not directly supernatural, these have the feel of a fairytale.

If it is Updike’s realist magic you are after, then Meg Wolitzer is, like him, a lyrical chronicler of love and marriage – but unlike Updike, brilliant at female characters as well as male ones. Her descriptions in The Interestings and The Female Persuasion of loneliness, love, growing maturity and reading itself evoke quotidian joys and sorrows with humour, generosity and hope.

Diana Evans is another superb domestic realist. Her new novel, Ordinary People, contains some of the best descriptions of happy and unhappy sex I’ve read since Ian McEwan’s Atonement. She writes about black south Londoners struggling with young families, ambition, adultery and disappointment with the wry insights Updike gave to his white east coasters.

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