Book review – fiction
The soundtracked novel that won’t sit still
The Emperor Waltz is long enough at 600 pages to be divided, in the old-fashioned way, into nine ‘books’. Each…
Maigret's new clothes – this month's best new crime novel, published 1931
The publisher has whipped up a tsunami of excitement around The Truth About the Harry Quebert Affair (translated from the…
You know something’s up when MI6 moves its head office to Croydon
Alan Judd’s spy novels occupy a class of their own in the murky world of espionage fiction, partly because they…
Stephen King – return of the great storyteller
Stephen King’s latest novel, Mr Mercedes, is dedicated to James M. Cain and described as ‘a riveting suspense thriller’ —…
The man who loathed emoticons - especially :)) as it reminded him of his double chin
Paul O’Rourke, the narrator of Joshua Ferris’s third novel, is a dentist who spends his days staring into the murky…
The breasts that launched Les Fleurs du Mal
This novel is based on the life of Charles Baudelaire and the relationship he enjoyed — or endured — with…
Those weren't the days
If you wanted a brief epigraph for Linda Grant’s recent fiction, then five words from Dorothy Parker might well do…
Not quite romantic fiction, or literary fiction, or commercial fiction – but still quite good
Elements of Raffaella Barker’s new novel, her eighth for adults, suggest commercial fiction: a narrative that oscillates between the aftermath…
The repression, anger and bloodshed of our own Game of Thrones
When I took up archery it was a relatively niche sport. Then Game of Thrones came along, and everyone wanted…
The best new children's books
A children’s author and illustrator, Jonathan Emmet, created a stir recently by saying that women are effectively gatekeepers of children’s…
If you prefer banal symbols freighted with meaning to plot, Nicola Barker is your woman
Readers familiar with Nicola Barker’s hyper-caffeinated style will be surprised by the almost serene first few chapters of her latest…
How to survive the rain-sodden Welsh Marches
The Welsh Marches, gloriously unvisited amid their wooded hills and swift-flowing streams, have remained mysteriously off-limits to the sort of…
A Colder War, by Charles Cumming - review
The title of Charles Cumming’s seventh novel is both a nod to the comfortable polarities of Cold War and also…
A truth too tender for memoir
It has been 14 years since Akhil Sharma published his first, widely acclaimed novel, An Obedient Father. Though its subject…
No one would want to live in Jane Gardam's stories – but they're an amazing place to visit
In the world of Jane Gardam’s stories the past is always present, solid and often unwanted and always too big,…
Mid-life crisis, 13th-century style
The word delicate is seldom a compliment. I once threw a saucepan of hot soup out of a fifth storey…
An escape from New South Wales
Thomas Keneally has constructed his latest novel around a framework of true events: the mass break-out of Japanese PoWs from…
The gambler’s daily grind
Lord Doyle is a shrivelled English gambler frittering away his money and destroying his liver in the casinos of Macau.…
A Mughal Disneyland and a ripping yarn
Mysore, once the capital of a princely kingdom in South India, has lost its lustre. In Mahesh Rao’s darkly comic…
Start with a torpedo, and see where you go from there
Sebastian Barry’s new novel opens with a bang, as a German torpedo hits a supply ship bound for the Gold…
A thriller that breaks down the publishing office door
Like teenage children and their parents, authors and publishers have a symbiotic relationship characterised by well-justified irritation on both sides.…
Don't let creative writing students read this book
One of these is by Lydia Davis, acclaimed American writer. One is not. They are whole pieces, by the way,…
A Beckett fagend rescued from a bin
Spectator readers of my vintage will remember their first encounter with Beckett as vividly as their first lover’s kiss. For…
Sex and squalor in San Francisco
Frog Music begins with a crime against a young mother, committed in a tiny space. Unlike Emma Donoghue’s bestselling novel…
Samuel Beckett walks into a nail bar
It isn’t very often that a writer’s work is so striking that you can remember exactly where and when you…
