The third in Brooke-Roses sequence of early realist novels, The Dear Deceit, first published in 1960, chronicles in reverse the misadventures of Alfred Northbrook Hayley, a scheming opportunist whose canards and manipulations are met with fatigue and irritation among his family, and whose romantic, financial, and religious struggles form in part a striking autobiographical portrait of Brooke-Roses own father, Alfred Rose. By moving in reverse order from adulthood to childhood, the novel is structured as a form of genealogical investigation, subverting the conventional bildungsroman by...