Art, memory, love, war: Andrew O’Hagan’s fifth novel, The Illuminations, tosses familiar enough novelistic tropes our way. What makes it remarkable, in part, is a bravura performance in which O’Hagan moves seamlessly between a seniors’ complex in coastal Scotland and the baked landscapes of war-torn Afghanistan. If O’Hagan were an R&B singer, he’d be Mariah Carey in her octaval heyday. Read more…