Book review – fiction
Bish bash Bosphorus: Elif Shafak’s saga of love and death in Istanbul is crammed with incident on every page
If you like to curl up by the fire with a proper, old-fashioned, saga-style tale about a boy and his…
Fact, fiction or farce? The American comic novel is becoming increasingly hard to define
The American comic novel is going through an odd phase. Just lately it seems like anything funny must sneak in…
Stories about storytelling: Kirsty Gunn’s preoccupation with words is utterly entrancing
Although entitled Infidelities this collection of short stories could as well be called Choices, because that is what really preoccupies…
After the trilogy (and the hurricane): the likeable return of Frank Bascombe
The story of Frank Bascombe, a sports-writer turned estate agent but always a New Jersey homebody, has already taken Richard…
A treasure-trove of grisly Arab tales may appeal more to an Isis fighter than your average British reader
The marvellous tales of the title are not just confined to the contents of this book, for the travels and…
Grimms’ fairy tales: the hardcore version
Child murder, domestic slavery, abusive families, cannibalism and intergenerational hatred — what could be better for the festive fireside than…
A brief, witty look at the coming of the e-book
Paul Fournel is a novelist, former publisher and French cultural attaché in London, and the provisionally definitive secretary and president…
Women in the various hells of Algiers
On the surface Harraga is the story of two ill-matched women colliding dramatically, with life-changing consequences. What emerges, in throwaway…
God, aliens and a novel with a mission
They say never work with children and animals. They could just as well say don’t write about aliens and God.…
A book about the ordinary nothings that, in the end, are everything
We live in a world in which nuance is trampled on and cannot survive. Is that true? I don’t know.…
Némirovsky's love letter to the France that spurned her and killed her
By 1940 Irène Némirovsky, who had arrived in France at the age of 16 as a refugee from Kiev, had…
Which great French novelist was also a crossword-setter?
One could have endless fun setting quiz questions about Georges Perec. Which French novelist had a scientific paper, ‘Experimental demonstration…
A big literary beast's descent into incoherence
Something odd happened between the advance publicity for this book and its printed appearance. Trailed as addressing the troubled history…
The greatest sitcom that never was
Funny Girl is the story of the early career of the vivacious, hilarious Sophie Straw, star of the much-loved BBC…
The problem when novelists write short stories
Rose Tremain walks on water. Her historical novels are absolutely marvellous, brilliantly plotted, witty and wise, with some of the…
Michael Frayn’s new book is the most highbrow TV sketch show ever
Enough of big ideas and grand designs. Instead, here are 30 unusually small ideas from the giant pulsating brain of…
The Tudor sleuth who's cracked the secret of suspense
Some reviewers are slick and quick. Rapid readers, they remember everything, take no notes, quote at will. I’m the plodding…
Cronenberg attempts a teleportation from cinema to fiction. Cover your eyes…
Following his beginnings as a science-fiction horror director, David Cronenberg has spent the past decades transforming himself into one of…
A Jamaican civil war, with cameos from Bob Marley
There are many more than seven killings in this ironically titled novel — in fact very long — that starts…
While Holmes is away
Careful Sherlockians, on returning in adulthood to the four novels and 56 short stories that they devoured uncritically in their…
Imagine Eastenders directed by David Lynch
Ghostly doings are afoot in Edwardian London. Choking fog rolls over the treacle- black Thames. Braziers cast eerie shadows in…
A jaunty romp of rape and pillage through the 16th century
The Brethren, by Robert Merle, who died at the age of 95 ten years ago, was originally published in 1977,…
Wave goodbye to the weight-gaining, drunk-driving Inspector Wallander
Some years ago I met the Swedish crime writer Henning Mankell at the Savoy Hotel in London, where he was…
James Ellroy’s latest attempt to unseat the Great American Novel
Aficionados of detective fiction have long known that the differences between the soft- and hard-boiled school are so profound that,…
Colm Toibin’s restraint – like his characters' – is quietly overwhelming
In Colm Tóibín’s much-loved 2009 novel Brooklyn, Eilis Lacy, somewhat to her own surprise, leaves 1950s Enniscorthy (Tóibín’s own home…
