autofiction
A meditation on reality: Transcription, by Ben Lerner, reviewed
In a short, glittering novel, Lerner shows how the factual is always infused with the fictional as he explores the tension between the given and the constructed
Dark family secrets: Repetition, by Vigdis Hjorth, reviewed
With a haunting crime at its heart, this bitter, brief novel leaves one wondering uncomfortably whether it might be a memoir in disguise
Bookshop blues: Service, by John Tottenham, reviewed
An aspiring novelist working the evening shift in an LA bookstore is forced to listen to endless chat about works he knows in his heart to be terrible – or, worse, fears might be good
A rebellious childhood: Lowest Common Denominator, by Pirkko Saisio, reviewed
In droll, sardonic, dialogue-driven scenes, Saisio transports us to her youth in Cold War Finland and her longing to become a writer
A long goodbye to Berlin
Christopher Isherwood’s experiences as a young man in Weimar Germany would be reworked in his autofiction for the rest of his life
Communing with the dead
Grief leads us down some strange roads. Few, though, can be as peculiar as those charted by Paul Stanbridge in…
A mysterious muse
If you were to glance only briefly at the title of the Irish poet Doireann Ní Ghríofa’s prose debut you…
Mothers and daughters
A new novel by Esther Freud — her ninth — raises the perennial but always fascinating question about the use…
Return to the lost city
During a press interview in Bombay about his latest book, the author-narrator of Friend of My Youth feels ‘a surge…
