family saga
Memory test: The Candy House, by Jennifer Egan, reviewed
On page 231 of The Candy House, a sequel – no, a ‘sibling’ says Jennifer Egan – to the Pulitzer…
An Egyptian comedy of errors
The Yacoubian Building, the first novel of the Egyptian writer Alaa Al Aswany, sold well over a million copies in…
A sombre Irish family saga — that glows in the dark
The Green Road is a novel in two parts about leaving and returning home. A big house called Ardeevin, walking…
An epic performance that brings a lost novelist back to life
Hugh Walpole, now almost forgotten, was a literary giant. Descended from the younger brother of the 18th-century prime minister Robert…
Fairytales of racism
A preview of Helen Oyeyemi’s Boy, Snow, Bird appeared in Granta’s Best of Young British Novelists issue in April last…
A family novel that pulls up the carpet before you're even in the door
I first mistook David Gilbert’s second novel for the sort of corduroy-sleeved family saga at which American writers excel. The…
Should Elizabeth Jane Howard have brought back the Cazalets?
Some years ago, a woman wrote to Dear Mary, at the back of this periodical, with an unusual problem: she…
