Literary critics face particular obstacles in thinking about and interpreting the novels with which they share a period. As Robert Eaglestone has noted, because the archive from which literary critics of the contemporary choose is constantly expanding, because we lack the perspective which retrospect brings, our criteria of selection tend to be based on subjects we have already chosen: ‘we choose the themes … and then find books that explore these themes’. However, it is possible to see that the selection of themes and the subsequent claims made have reached something of a critical consensus in contemporary literary studies. For many critics, the contemporary novel has rejected a postmodern playfulness that draws attention to textuality and exhibits a scepticism about the nature of representation. Instead, it attempts to reattach itself to what is usually called ‘the real’ and a new seriousness in narrowing the gap between fictional representation and the world around it. Even those critics who see a continuation of some of the claims of postmodernist thought argue that these are being forced into relation with a more recent desire for the ‘real’. For Daniel Lea, the contemporary novel is involved in a ‘striving to marry the desire for the real with the legacy of postmodernism’s fascination with the simulacral’. These claims about a ‘return to the real’ have very often also involved a reassessment of the contemporary British novel’s engagement with the conventions of realism. For many critics, novels since 2000 have acknowledged that no easy return to a classic realism is possible. Instead they argue that what many do is challenge the ‘simple opposition’ between realism and experiment. In this chapter, I will not be suggesting that this reading of the post-millennial novel is mistaken. Writers themselves – in interviews, articles and essays – are articulating their aims and concerns in such terms. Rather, I want to suggest that parallel to a desire for a return to the ‘real’ there runs an anxious awareness of the limits of the novel in achieving such a return.