The literary debut is mythologised endlessly. The follow-up gets quieter treatment, usually unfavourable, sometimes hostile, occasionally just confused. Writers who arrive with a fully-formed first novel are expected to keep arriving on the same terms, ideally with the same texture. When the second book is stranger, less compact, or more difficult, the consensus tends to settle quickly: a misfire.

That consensus is often wrong. What follows is a defence of seven sophomore novels that received poor reviews, sales disappointments, or both, and which reward the patient reader more than the celebrated debuts they're forever measured against.

The second novel is a structural problem disguised as an aesthetic one. A first book is judged on what it is; a second is judged on what its predecessor was. Patient reading reverses the comparison and asks instead what the writer was attempting on the second outing, and how often that attempt was misread by reviewers in a hurry. Most of these books remain in print. They have outlasted their reception. That tends to mean something.