Book review – fiction
A suffragette sequel: Old Baggage, by Lissa Evans reviewed
Lissa Evans has had a good idea for her new novel. It’s ‘suffragettes: the sequel’. She sets her story not…
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 —…
Shades of the Mitfords: After the Party, by Cressida Connolly, reviewed
At the beginning of After the Party, Phyllis Forrester tells us she was in prison. While inside, her hair turned…
A cold archaeological gaze: In the Garden of the Fugitives, by Ceridwen Dovey, reviewed
Visiting Pompeii, it is hard to miss the garden of the fugitives. It is on every other postcard in the…
Foreign bodies galore: the best new crime fiction
Ghosts of the Past by Marco Vichi (Hodder, £18.99) is unashamedly nostalgic in tone. The title could not be more…
Crudo, by Olivia Laing, reviewed
Olivia Laing has been deservedly lauded for her thoughtful works of non-fiction To the River, The Trip to Echo Spring…
A Shout in the Ruins, by Kevin Powers, reviewed
We’re in Virginia, in the 1850s. A girl called Emily is tormenting her dog, Champion, and her father’s teenage slave,…
Lucia, by Alex Pheby, reviewed
In 1988, James Joyce’s grandson Stephen destroyed all letters he had from, to or about his aunt Lucia Joyce, the…
The Mars Room, by Rachel Kushner reviewed
Asked how he achieves the distinctive realism for which his novels and screenplays are famous, Richard Price, that sharp chronicler…
The Female Persuasion, by Meg Wolitzer reviewed
It’s because it’s the land of the loner that the United States is so loved or loathed. Yet to me…
Motherhood, by Sheila Heti reviewed
‘I don’t think this was something I ever felt’, Sheila Heti writes in Motherhood — ‘that my body, my life,…
Missing, by Alison Moore reviewed
Whereas in an unabashed thriller, in the TV series The Missing, for example, the object of the exercise is well…
Couldn’t Diana Evans’s fretful couples just shut up and deal with it?
My husband started reading Diana Evans’s third novel, Ordinary People, the day after I’d finished it. Three days later, I…
The daring exploits of Romain Gary
When Romain Gary, a courageous and much decorated pilot in the RAF’s Free French squadron, was presented to the Queen…
A single mother hits rock bottom in Tokyo: Territory of Light reviewed
Before her death two years ago, Yuko Tsushima was a powerful voice in Japanese literature; a strong candidate for the…
Our sheltered lives have made us overly fearful: Aminatta Forna’s Happiness reviewed
In her keynote lecture for a conference on ‘The Muse and the Market’ in 2015 Aminatta Forna mounted a powerful…
Six wintry days in Saratoga Springs: Upstate by James Wood reviewed
Alan Querry, the central figure in James Wood’s second novel, is someone who, in his own words, doesn’t ‘think about…
Spend, spend, spend at the court of Philip IV of Spain
‘Nine hours,’ boasted my friend the curator about his trip to the Prado. Nine! Two hours is my upper limit…
How can we know what dead people want?
In 1999, Patrick Hemingway published True at First Light, a new novel by his father Ernest. In his role as…
Alarm bells ring when I read about grown women and dolls
Mona — single, childless, pushing 60 — sells wooden dolls made by a carpenter friend, which she delicately costumes from…
Down’s syndrome and dystopia in Jesse Bull’s Census
Census is a curious, clever novel. It depicts a dystopia with a father and his Down’s syndrome son journeying from…
Simplicius Simplicissimus and the horrors of the Thirty Years’ War
On 23 May 1618, Bohemian Protestants pushed two Catholic governors and their secretary through the windows of Prague Castle, in…
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…
A nightmare scenario in the city of dreaming spires
‘Dreaming spires’? Yes, but sometimes there are nightmares. Brian Martin, awarded the MBE for services to English literature, is at…
Frankenstein’s monster is more frightening than ever
On the wall of her tumbledown house in central Baghdad, an elderly Christian widow named Elishva has a beloved icon…
