Courage and humour in the face of unimaginable grief
Miriam Toews meditates on suicide, silence and the messiness of survival as she attempts to answer the question: ‘Why Do I Write’?
Extremes of passion: What Will Survive of Us, by Howard Jacobson, reviewed
On first meeting, Sam and Lily both suffer a coup de foudre and embark on an affair involving submission and sado-masochism. But where will it lead?
Three men in exile: My Friends, by Hisham Matar, reviewed
Terror of discovery by the Libyan authorities haunts Khaled, Hosam and Mustafa after their protests against Gaddafi make their return home impossible
Echoes of Chekhov
Alex Clark enjoys a poignant story centring on a cherry orchard, three sisters and their mother’s past love affair
Adolescent angst
A violent adolescent breaks out of his ‘Last Chance’ reform home at dead of night – but can he ever escape his inner turmoil?
Mad men plotting
Fifteen years ago, A.M. Homes published The Mistress’s Daughter, an explosive, painful account of how she met her birth mother,…
God’s first draft
Readers familiar with Sheila Heti’s work, most notably How Should a Person Be? and Motherhood, in which she examines both…
Dirty secrets
Claire Keegan’s tiny, cataclysmic novel takes us into the heart of small-town Ireland a few decades ago, creating a world…
L and M
A great writer must be prepared to risk ridiculousness — not ridicule, although that may follow, but the possibility that…
An unexamined life
Micah Mortimer, the strikingly unproactive protagonist of Anne Tyler’s 23rd novel, is a man of such unswerving routine that his…
Born again: My Year of Rest and Relaxation, by Ottessa Moshfegh, reviewed
The new novel by the author of the 2016 Booker shortlisted Eileen is at once a jumble of influences —…
Drowning in superstition: a magnificent thriller of medieval England
Samantha Harvey is much rated by critics and those readers who have discovered her books, but deserving of a far…
Jeffrey Archer: Jeremy Corbyn will be PM because the voters are sick of us Tories
Always go to a storyteller if you want a sparky answer to a question. What does Jeffrey Archer, bestselling author,…
On the waterfront
Much has been made of the American novelist Jennifer Egan’s mutation, in her latest novel, from purveyor of metafiction and…
The man who disappeared
Walking out of one’s own life — unpredictably, perhaps even without premeditation and certainly without anything approaching a plan —…
Mother Medea
Medea’s continuing hold over spinners of tall tales from Euripides to Chaucer to Pasolini needs little explanation; she’s an archetype…
When less is more
It’s 2008 in Manhattan, and there’s still a brief window for the Goldman bankers to swill their ’82 Petrus before…
Mournful and meticulous
After a curtain-twitching cul-de-sac, a Preston shopping precinct, and the Church of the Latter-Day Saints brought to Lancashire, Jenn Ashworth…
A host of unquiet spirits
As its title suggests, Julie Myerson’s tenth novel is about stoppage: the kind that happens when one suffers a loss…
Erica Jong’s middle-aged dread
Who’d get old? Bits fall off, your loved ones start dropping like flies and, perhaps worst of all, the only…
Quiet desperation
Andrew Miller’s seventh novel, and the first since Pure, which won the Costa Book of the Year award, is an…
Man of many worlds
Cult novelist Michael Moorcock on fantasy, his father, and the London he loved and lost
Is no one having fun?
Who’d be young? Not 25-year-old Tamsin, if her behaviour is anything to go by. A classical pianist who’s never quite…
Sink or swim
The Lost Child begins with a scene of 18th-century distress and dissolution down by the docks, as a woman —…
Good old bad old days
Anthony Quinn’s fourth novel, set in London’s artistic and theatrical circles in 1936, is not the kind in which an…
