Fiction

The need to feel seen: Perfection, by Vincenzo Latronico, reviewed

1 February 2025 9:00 am

A young couple in thrall to the beauty of their Instagrammed life soon grow dissatisfied with reality, and ennui follows them wherever they go

Visionary tales: Mrs Calder and the Hyena, by Marjorie Ann Watts, reviewed

1 February 2025 9:00 am

Sharply drawn characters, young and old, gleefully challenge conventional judgments and form liberating new friendships in this exhilarating collection of short stories

A painful homecoming: The Visitor, by Maeve Brennan, reviewed

25 January 2025 9:00 am

Returning to the family house in Dublin after the death of her mother in Paris, 22-year-old Anastasia expects a warm welcome – only to be steadily spurned by her embittered grandmother

This other Eden: Adam and Eve in Paradise, by Eça de Queirós, reviewed

25 January 2025 9:00 am

Published in 1897, Queiros’s novella revisits Christianity’s first man and woman, departing from the Creation story in ways both playful and profound

Bad vibrations: Lazarus Man, by Richard Price, reviewed

11 January 2025 9:00 am

Shudderings from a subway extension in Harlem causes a tenement building to collapse, killing six people and leading to many missing in this cinematic thriller

The unfulfilled life: Ask Me Again, by Clare Sestanovich, reviewed

11 January 2025 9:00 am

Our aimless young heroine struggles to find herself in New York, Washington and Los Angeles – but even the novel’s inconclusiveness is compelling

Outlandish epic: Lies and Sorcery, by Elsa Morante, reviewed

11 January 2025 9:00 am

Spanning three generations of Sicilian women, this family saga of honour, deception and class politics is also a study in morality and the petty ways in which it is eroded

Rebellion and repression: Oromay, by Baalu Girma, reviewed

11 January 2025 9:00 am

Girma’s semi-autobiographical thriller follows the efforts of the Marxist Mengistu to crush secessionist Eritrea in the bloody aftermath of Haile Selassie’s downfall

A winter’s tale: Brightly Shining, by Ingvild Rishoi, reviewed

11 January 2025 9:00 am

In a poignant story reminiscent of ‘The Little Match Girl’, two Norwegian children try to dodge social services by selling wreaths and Christmas trees when their father fails to provide for them

Menacing masterpieces: Voices of the Fallen Heroes and Other Stories, by Yukio Mishima

4 January 2025 9:00 am

Of the collection’s 14 mesmerising tales, two in particular stand out: a hallucination of nuclear apocalypse and a requiem for Japan’s war dead

Bad air days: Savage Theories, by Pola Oloixarac, reviewed

4 January 2025 9:00 am

University students immersed in drug-and-group-sex and online gaming reveal the dark side of Buenos Aires

Rumpelstiltskin retold: Alive in the Merciful Country, by A.L. Kennedy, reviewed

4 January 2025 9:00 am

A group of idealistic activists is betrayed by a charismatic newcomer who dazzles with skill and charm – and gets away with murder. Repeatedly

Modern-day ghosts: Haunted Tales, by Adam Macqueen, reviewed

14 December 2024 9:00 am

Dark, unsettling stories set mostly in the world of social media and panic rooms are, strikingly, as much about love as death – and how love is stronger

Out of this world: The Suicides, by Antonio di Benedetto, reviewed

7 December 2024 9:00 am

Written as Argentina descended into the Dirty War, this eerie fable about a reporter investigating a spate a suicides is thrillingly original

Learning difficulties: The University of Bliss, by Julian Stannard, reviewed

7 December 2024 9:00 am

The bureaucrats have taken over, treating both academics and students as administrative nuisances in a searing satire on university life

The curse of distraction: Lesser Ruins, by Mark Haber, reviewed

30 November 2024 9:00 am

A former college professor prepares to write his long-gestated book on Montaigne, but finds his mind wandering from 1970s nudism to Balzac’s coffee dependency

A post-Brexit entertainment: The Proof of My Innocence, by Jonathan Coe, reviewed

23 November 2024 9:00 am

A satire on radical economic libertarianism combines with a cosy Cotswold murder mystery in an ingenious series of stories within stories

A quest for retribution: Fire, by John Boyne, reviewed

16 November 2024 9:00 am

Freya, a respected consultant in a burns unit, is on a secret mission to destroy as many young boys’ lives as possible, having been raped by teenagers on holiday in Cornwall at the age of 12

The agonies of adolescence: The Party, by Tessa Hadley, reviewed

9 November 2024 9:00 am

In post-war Bristol, two sisters fall in with a group of arrogant young men and soon feel themselves painfully inferior

The spy who came back from retirement: Karla’s Choice, by Nick Harkaway, reviewed

9 November 2024 9:00 am

Given a new lease of life by John le Carré’s son, George Smiley gets embroiled in a murky affair involving the Circus’s key Stasi asset and a missing Hungarian literary agent

Doppelgangers galore: The Novices of Lerna, by Angel Bonomini, reviewed

9 November 2024 9:00 am

A graduate from Argentina, offered a six-month fellowship in Switzerland, is appalled to meet – and have to live with - 24 versions of himself

Waifs and strays: Gliff, by Ali Smith, reviewed

2 November 2024 9:00 am

Two lonely, recalcitrant children, Briar and Rose, find themselves among a bunch of other rag-tag misfits resisting ‘re-education’ by the brutal regime in power

A geriatric Lord of the Flies: Killing Time, by Alan Bennett, reviewed

2 November 2024 9:00 am

Chaos reigns at an old people’s home when Covid strikes, but the more rebellious residents won’t take the situation lying down

An otherworldly London: The Great When, by Alan Moore, reviewed

26 October 2024 9:00 am

Is occult knowledge even possible in the age of the internet? If a recondite author obsessed you back in the…

Doctor in trouble: Time of the Child, by Niall Williams, reviewed

26 October 2024 9:00 am

In the early 1960s, glimmers of change start to appear in the Irish ‘backwater’ parish of Faha. A smuggled copy…