Prospect - article_details: ". The novel, in its fully realised state, exists to reflect on those links between us - on their making and breaking. How can it do that other than through stories? The writer's task, as Margaret Atwood has said, is to make those stories plausible. The only excuse for taking refuge in introspection and irony is meanness and the fear of involvement. Fiction, like life, is no idle stroll. As Flaubert continues in the letter quoted above, 'When I reflect that so much beauty has been entrusted to me - to me - I am so terrified that I am seized with cramps and long to rush off and hide.'"