According to Freud it is possible to be wrecked by success. Of course it is also possible to be wrecked by failure, and Adam Kellas, the main protagonist of Now We Are Beginning Our Descent is wrecked by both simultaneously.

Adam Kellas, like James Meek himself, is a British war journalist who finds himself covering the war in Afghanistan. While stationed there he starts a deliberately provocative and commercial thriller and also encounters another journalist - an American called Astrid - with whom he rapidly becomes fascinated ('A fascination was what came about when a single life wasn't enough to contain the presence of someone else inside him'). For instance he finds himself thinking about the sound she makes, the 'exhalation with voice which came from her involuntarily' as she takes the load of her rucksack on her back.

A year later, back in the UK, he has finished his thriller and has just received the offer of a six-figure sum from a publisher, and yet he is unhappy. The book, after all, is a cynical reaction to the market place after his previous novels, a little like James Meek's works before The People's Act of Love, haven't sold at all. He has written it to make money and to be read, and it compares unfavourably with the masterpiece of his friend which is being lauded everywhere. He quits his job as a journalist and boards a plane and travels first class to New York and during this journey he tells his story, in flashback, to the woman sitting next to him. Gradually various layers of his life are exposed: explosive, dangerous incidents in both Afghanistan and Britain that have caused him to begin his descent. There are two main pivotal moments: an incident in Afghanistan which makes him question his role as disinterested observer (accidentally he becomes involves and feels guilty) and a dinner-party which is jaw-dropping in its vindictiveness. Both of these are causing him to run away, and yet he is also running towards something too.

But this running away is also a sort of slithering downwards - how much so becomes apparent in one of the major twists in the novel when he reaches New York - and once he starts slithering he can't seem to stop. He runs blindly onwards towards what he thinks he wants but having found it discovers it is not what he wanted at all. It sounds desperate, and in some ways it is, but there is a touch of satisfaction which is not just schadenfreude, because it is only by descending that Adam Kellas can learn that no one ever gets exactly what they want. He has to compromise, and his new acquisition turns out to be more valuable because of that.

This is a hugely satisfying novel, cleverly-constructed, one of the best I have read for some time; the characters, dialogue and settings are fascinating and the story gripping. There are so many beautifully-written passages that I have difficulty picking out just one, but I think it is when Meek describes characters that I admire him the most:

He dressed as if he believed he was a younger, fitter man, in a tight black sweater that clung to his sagging torso. He wore Ray-Bans and had eczema. He was always moving, making jerky little movements of his head, shifting from foot to foot, swinging his body from side to side, like a bird waiting for grain to fall.

It is also a book that incidentally tells a lot about the process of writing - or at least how James Meek writes. It is in part a plea for the purity of the creative process and the idea that a writer should above all write for his or herself as the passenger next to Adam Kellas says 'I like to think there are people out there writing books that I can only read by working hard at it even if I never do read them. I like to think there are writers left who don't give a fuck, you know? "Here's my book. You don't like it, you can go fuck yourself , I don't care."'

Until recently I had the same literary agent as James Meek but although she sold James Meek's last work very successfully - it was a multi-national bestseller - she couldn't sell mine at all and consequently I was dropped. It has been hard finding the motivation to continue but when I read that passage I felt that I should. The business of writing demands obstinacy and perseverance as well as talent and clearly James Meek has much of all three.

I have not yet read any of James Meeks's other works but now feel that I must, very soon, in fact I should think that I'd want to read every word that he writes.