A t the end of a night in a London pub, after last orders have been called, three friends are joking about what role they’d serve on a remote desert island, with no one but their fellow plane crash survivors for company. When one of them, an art critic turned reluctant schoolteacher, says that he would become an artist, he is, naturally, mocked. His friend Sybil, who actually is a painter, casts herself more sensibly as a demigod-queen of the island and employs her newly creative companion to “certify her glory”. “That’s what artists are for,” she says, “I pay you in fermented coconut water and you tell yourself you’re free and drink yourself to death.”

This is about as clear a statement as one could wish for regarding the position of contemporary art as it relates to power: the boot of the latter is placed firmly on the former’s throat. This relationship is the central theme of The Floating World, Ben Eastham’s debut novel, which is narrated by the somewhat hapless and unnamed critic-teacher.…