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There’s a game, but it isn’t a game. In the world invented by Bridget Collins for this dizzyingly wonderful novel, the “grand jeu” is a national pastime (although which nation is never
stated), practised at its most refined by a priestly caste of “magisters”, who also educate the next generation of players. The university of the grand jeu is a high, secluded castle called
Montverre — a place of cavernous halls and mysterious corridors, strange cries and creeping shadows — where scholars adopt a life of strict tradition. Outside, an authoritarian government is
scheming to control the grand jeu for its own vicious purposes. _The Betrayals_ is Collins’s second novel for adults after last year’s wildly bestselling _The Binding_, and like _The
Binding_, it puts us in the realm of fantasy. Not fantasy in the extravagant world-building style of, say, George RR Martin (and those who are tired of waiting for closure on_ A Song of Ice
and Fire _have reason to be grateful for more moderate imaginations), but a kind of fantasy that nestles within the familiar — a little owed to JK Rowling, who put magic into the suburbs; a
little in common with Susanna Clarke’s _Piranesi_, or (at the twee end of the scale) the books of Jessie Burton. Whether or not anything strictly supernatural happens in these stories,
there’s a sense of strangeness and unlikelihood that is tantamount to enchantment. We see Montverre through four interwoven narratives. First we meet the Rat, a girl who lives furtively in
the deserted reaches of the servants’ quarters, surviving alone on instinct and suspicion and what she can take from the kitchens: “Life is simple for Rats. She does what she has to, no more
or less. More and less are for humans.” Then come Léo Martin (and former Montverre student), the Minister for Culture who immediately becomes ex-minister, having blotted an immaculate
record of party loyalty by querying the sinister-sounding “unity bill”. His penance is exile to Montverre. “It is a touching story, the artist returning to his roots, fulfilling his
vocation. Who knows, it’s possible you will be of use to us there,” the Chancellor says, dictating Léo’s resignation for him. The government’s eagerness to send him there, however, is not
matched by a warm welcome from everyone at the institution. The Magister Ludi — who is the only woman in the all-male school, an amateur elected to her post by a vaguely explained shortlist
mix-up — is particularly displeased by Léo’s arrival, and her animosity seems to be political and very personal. The explanation for that hostility lies in Léo’s past, which is revealed
through diaries from his time at Montverre. Through them, we learn about his own far-from-privileged background and his passionate rivalry with a fellow student, Carfax, scion of the noble
de Courcy family — famous for their mastery of the grand jeu, and their tendency to madness (one of Carfax’s ancestors is a pyromaniac nicknamed “the lunatic of London library”). “I am going
to be top of the class this year. I swear it. Whatever it takes,” young Léo writes. “And one day, I promise, I am going to see Carfax de Courcy cry.” Advertisement The only environment more
fertile for betrayals than a Soviet-esque political party is probably a university staff room, and the novel lives up to its name. There are crossings, double-crossings, denouncements and
defrockings — and that’s before anyone drags love into the perilous equation. Collins summons a Gormenghast-esque richness of place and people, but while Mervyn Peake’s imagination feels out
of control, _The Betrayals_ is a perfectly constructed work of fiction, with audacious twists that clumsier hands would fumble, and irresistibly moving emotional beats. (Collins also writes
about sex with real tenderness grounded in character, which is a rare skill.) As for the grand jeu itself, it’s a tantalisingly unknowable thing, only defined by what it isn’t. “It is not
music,” the Magister Ludi tells an audience of eager pupils. “It is not maths or science or poetry. It is not art. It is not fiction . . . You may make something of all these things that is
not a grand jeu, and equally a grand jeu may have none of them at all.” Collins marks her own debt to Hermann Hesse’s _Glass Bead Game _for this invention, but it recalls another grand old
man of European literature: Nabokov called fiction a “game of worlds”, and Collins plays her own game here with perfect skill. _THE BETRAYALS_ BY BRIDGET COLLINS, BOROUGH, 425PP; £14.99