The Sentimentalists, by Johanna Skibsrud, William Heinemann, RRP£12.99, 224 pages

In a small Canadian town, US Vietnam vet Napoleon Haskell lives out his twilight years, sharing a house with the father of his dead best friend, who was killed in action. Haskell, a recovering alcoholic, never talks about the war, instead devoting his energies to a series of ill-conceived enthusiasms, from internet stocks to boat construction. Only when Haskell’s grown-up daughter comes to live with him – after finding her boyfriend in bed with another woman – does the story that defined his life emerge.

Johanna Skibsrud’s first novel was the surprise winner of 2010’s Scotiabank Giller Prize, often nicknamed “the Canadian Booker”. It is easy to see what impressed the judges. The Sentimentalists is a writer’s book: lyrical, thoughtful, occasionally – if fleetingly – bogged down by the intensity of its focus but compulsively readable.

An account of the fog of old age and the fog of war, this is a moving testament to the fragility of the stories we tell about ourselves.