One of the qualities John Berger is regularly praised for is his precision; reviews of his work (which includes the seminal art thesis Ways of Seeing and the 1972 Booker-winner, G) are peppered with the word. Precision, though, is not the attribute that comes to mind when reading From A to X. Sententiousness does, and sloppiness and sentimentality, but not precision. How this tired, portentous book made it onto this year's Man Booker longlist is a mystery.

The novel is constructed as a series of letters, found in an old prison in a nameless police state and presented by Berger in the random order in which they were found. The missives have been written by an activist called A'ida to her lover, Xavier, who is languishing in jail for being “a founder member of a terrorist network”, but the transcript also contains Xavier's own thoughts written on the back of the letters, plus additional notes A'ida never sent. Berger doesn't explain how these found their way so conveniently into the pile, saying only (with a laziness typical of the novel) that to do so would “endanger other parties”.

Such a set-up, unexplained extras notwithstanding, should offer rich possibilities for the novelist. Berger, though, doesn't seem interested in exploring any of them. He barely bothers with characterisation, reducing A'ida and Xavier to archetypes of struggling revolutionary spirit, he all gruff ideological epigrams, she a strangely submissive figure, either tediously pining for her lover, breathlessly reviewing their past (oh, how commanding Xavier was when he took her up in that plane), or tirelessly delivering political homilies. Subsidiary characters fare even worse, and are often so ill-defined (a single distinguishing feature will do) that one sometimes forgets who they are.

Berger seems equally uninterested in the epistolary form with which he has saddled himself. We get the occasional, half-hearted and unintentionally comic nod towards letter-writing convention - “Did you get the radishes sent by courier?” , “Your letter about donkeys made me laugh” - but mostly A'ida sounds as if she's writing a diary.

Worse, though, are the simplistic, black-and-white politics (Berger deals only in honest peasant allies, or generic, capitalised enemies such as Imperialism and Capitalism), and the aphorisms with which the book is littered - dozens of them, often so inaccurate or just plain gauche that they take the breath away. “The fear provoked by sounds is the hardest to control.” True? “Perfection is always unlovable.” Really? “Colours exist to provoke desire. And isn't that why we women embroider?”

The result is a novel so flat and bland as to be almost featureless. Berger, I imagine, would argue that little of this matters, and that he is less interested in fictional process than ultimate message - the eternal power of love, the timeless nature of oppression, the timeless need to oppose that oppression. In which case, why bother with a novel at all? Why not just gather all those epigrams up in a little book and be done with it? It would certainly have more integrity and interest than this slapdash effort.

From A to X by John Berger
Verso £12.99 pp197

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