Clara and Christina Author: Andrew CunningISBN-13: 9781399830218Publisher: John MurrayGuideline Price: £22Imagine going for a job interview and starting your pitch by criticising the panel for regularly employing talentless mediocrities over skilled artisans. Chances are, you’d be laughed out of the room. So kudos to Andrew Cunning for finding a publisher willing to take on his debut novel even as it sets fire to the very industry in which they work.The book begins with a young woman, Clara, interviewing an elderly writer, Christina Darnell, the author of four highly praised novels, who has slipped in and out of the literary world for decades, her absences lamented, her returns welcomed. From her university days, Clara has been a devoted admirer and now she’s writing a monograph on her career. As they both live in Belfast, Clara has contacted Christina’s agent to inquire whether she might permit an interview and, to her surprise, not only has her idol said yes but she’s agreed to a series of them. Every Sunday morning, in fact, over coffee.Most of the book is taken up with lengthy conversations between the pair, one at the beginning of her writing career, the other reaching the end, discussing the importance of fiction but also how it’s changed in the years since Christina’s debut was published. This might not sound riveting but somehow it is, and not just to those who spend their lives placing words on pages. The older woman is a calm, contented presence, satisfied with the work she’s produced, and although she feels the writing world has become diminished in both substance and integrity, her observations never come across as embittered carping, more disappointed resignation.Christina laments “the reduction of literature to causes” and Cunning takes some incisive potshots at young writers “who think themselves celebrities, which leads to some terrible books written by people whose principal desire is not to write but to be seen to write”. This is a sentiment with which many of us would agree, but for someone to express that in his first novel takes courage and conviction.He doesn’t stop there. He accurately laments “current publishing trends, how books are bought, sold and judged solely on the identity of their writers”, asks why “every second book nowadays is set on a university campus”, and recognises a genre that’s become so dominant that it’s led to a production line of bland, uninspired work that might as well have been written by AI: “sad young women in Irish cities” novels.[ The Benefactors by Wendy Erskine: A sparklingly polyphonic debut novel set in modern BelfastOpens in new window ]Christina criticises first-time writers, remarking that the obsession the media has with knowing who they are on a social, political and personal level gives many the impression that all of their experience is interesting to write about. It isn’t. “Go and read some debut novels if you want to test the truth of my hypothesis,” she adds, an amusing line for Cunning to include, considering he’s one himself.If this all sounds like the stuff of boorish, drunken debates at literary festivals, it’s anything but. Both women are strong characters with interesting, engaging things to say and the warmth that develops between them is genuinely moving. And there are side notes too. An affectionate relationship between Clara and her boyfriend, Dan, as well as a highly amusing encounter over lunch between Clara and a flamboyant bon viveur who has agreed to publish her monograph through his academic press.It’s worth noting that Cunning has published a monograph on an eminent woman writer known for lengthy breaks between novels – the American novelist, Marilynne Robinson – but as much of Clara and Christina appears to be steering readers away from drawing connections between an author’s life and the books they write, I’ll simply mention it as an aside.For those of us who care about literature, there are many troubling facets to contemporary fiction, particularly the proliferation of books by young writers that are hyped to death and wildly overpraised, both by critics and those blurbers for whom everything is an instant classic. Originality, for one thing. Imagination, for another. Daring, for a third. This book, however, has all those qualities in spades and while I hope it reaches many readers, it should be required reading for writers.That said, now that Cunning has told us what we’ve all been doing wrong for so long, it’ll be interesting to see how he sets things right with whatever he produces next.John Boyne’s new novel, The Weight of Angels, will be published in October