When posthumous fame becomes a reluctant inheritance

The detail is memorable because the action is both ordinary and slightly odd. It is a quietly comic moment that both creates humor at the expense of Carter and raises our sympathy for him (we feel his serene confusion). Elton’s writing is at its best in this kind of comic set-piece, with its taut, keen descriptions of mannerism and appearance (looking more “like a retired bank manager than a famous Hollywood director,’’ Carter acknowledges the audience by accomplishing “a creaky ‘Rocky’-style victory punch with his arms over his head’’).

The novel centers on Luke Hayman, the son of Arthur Hayman, whose series of books, “The Hayseed Chronicles,’’ acquires a Harry Potter-like popularity shortly after the writer’s death in a traffic accident in the early 1980s. As the writer lies dying on a Central London street, he is comforted by an American tourist, Laurie Clow, who develops an obsession with the man and his (then obscure) books. She is taken up by the grudgingly grateful upper-middle-class family of the dead writer: Martha, the urbane widow; Rachel, the unsteady, charming daughter; and Luke, the quiet, observing son, whose fictionalized appearance as the protagonist of “The Hayseed Chronicles’’ will win him an unwanted fame. Much of the humor of the novel emerges from the awkward relations between the unglamorous Laurie and the poised, attractive Haymans.

The ties between them become tighter when Laurie returns to the United States. She is employed as a DJ at a hospital radio station, where she reads “The Hayseed Chronicles’’ to a captive, though quickly entranced audience. By a complex process of publicity (Elton here draws on his professional knowledge: He has worked as a publisher and as a literary agent) the novels become international bestsellers. The final third of the novel — in which Elton’s writing (conducted largely through the first-person voice of Luke) is most assured and engaging — details the consequences of this fame for Laurie and the Haymans.