If you value your literary homeland, and think of books as buildings, then join me in insisting on a preservation order for The House Beautiful. Built (written) by Allison Burnett, it has the depth, the width and the height to carry the Babel of tongues, confusions, emotions, crushes, and zinging barbed wit, which cascade from it's chief resident, BK Troop, as he pushes forwards his dream of transforming an inelegant, down at heel Brownstone into a low rent artists colony in Babylon... well Manhattan then.

The House Beautiful is the home of endangered species: believable, eccentric, willful, memorable, fully dimensioned characters, who could pop off the page, wipe the printers ink off them, and be one of us - maddened, unhappy, lustful, mouths agape as every green light turns puce before them, and as conflicted as the next person. Could you say this of Harry Potter, don't think so. Jay Mcinerney ? Bret Easton Ellis? Ian McEwen, doubt it, Martin Amis, don't get me started!

I got face to face for the first time with BK Troop a couple of years ago when I got hold of a copy of Christopher, the author's debut novel. Then I reeled...in elation, not in horror. At last a character so distinct, so marked, that it can only be an injustice that his name has n't become a synonym for some kind of mood or behaviour. Who can be as rancourous, can swagger with bitchy brio, twiddle his thumbs nervously, emote as keenly as any adolescent, possess an enviable faculty for whiplash wit, and seems to channel the soul not just of the Knight of the Doleful Countenance, but of Shakespeare's Malvolio, a little touch of William Burroughs, and the hissing whisper of Truman Capote, than Mr Troop. Tell me, 'cos I've yet to find them.

Of course, the worry is always - Second Album Syndrome - will the next album, play, novel be as stunning as the first. How common is it for our affections to be stolen the first time round, only for the artist to be painfully swimming ashore to an indifferent world from the shipwreck of their follow on piece. So, what do I think? It's like this, I'm scanning the horizon, and it's clear, not a thing, there's no one wading ashore. This is a great novel. The writing is enviable. And it seems to be coming to the author so effortlessly.

By ye words may ye be judged, so they say. Judge me, buy the book, I think I'm right. Try Amazon or go to http://www.allisonburnett.com