Fiction
Puzzle pieces
This might seem an odd confession, but the work of Roberto Bolaño gives me very good bad dreams. When I…
Encircling gloom
When the unnamed narrator of Sarah Bernstein’s The Coming Bad Days leaves the man with whom she has been living…
The worst of times
Not long ago, a group of psychologists analysing data about national happiness discovered that the British were at their unhappiest…
From beyond the grave
Give dead bones a voice and they speak volumes: George Saunders’s Lincoln in the Bardo was clamorous with the departed…
The scholar and the gypsy
Naomi Ishiguro began writing Common Groundin the aftermath of the Brexit referendum. The title refers to both Goshawk Common in…
The parent trap
Gwendoline Riley’s unsentimental fiction hovers on the edge of comedy and bleakness, and has drawn comparisons from Jean Rhys to…
Black mischief
In the cloud-capped highlands of Rwanda, even the rain-makers sound like crashing snobs. When two teenage pupils from Our Lady…
Man about the house
I have enjoyed many of Alan Warner’s previous novels, so it gives me no pleasure to report that his new…
Weighty matters
This is a novel about ‘mommy issues’. Rachel is a Reform Jew, ‘more Chanel bag Jew than Torah Jew’, and…
Escape from reality
Ewan Morrison is an intellectually nimble writer with a penchant for provocation. His work has included the novels, Distance, Ménage…
Slanging match
I’ve tried hard to think of someone I dislike enough to recommend this novel to, but have failed. Elfriede Jelinek…
Women of the gospels
The gnostic Gospel of Mary has long been the subject of controversy, even as to which of the several Marys…
Bright and beautiful
Edward St Aubyn’s ‘Patrick Melrose’ novels were loosely autobiographical renderings of the author’s harrowing, rarefied, drug-sozzled existence. Despite their subject…
Truckload of trouble
A father and his estranged 20-year-old daughter set off across France, sharing the driver’s cabin of a long-haul truck. This…
On the game
For a novel set partly in a Soho brothel, Hot Stew is an oddly bloodless affair. Tawdry characters drift in…
A robot with feelings
The world of Kazuo Ishiguro’s new novel — let’s call it Ishville — is instantly recognisable. Our narrator, Klara, is…
On the defensive
Lauren Oyler is viral and vicious. A critic with a reputation for pulling no punches, she is known for delivering…
Weeping wounds
In France, even the car horns yelled about Algeria. A five-beat klaxon blast — three short, two long — signalled…
Yummy mummy
Seventh Seltzer is a nice family man, working as a publisher’s reader in New York, who happens to come from…
Anonymous alcoholics
Mick Herron has been called ‘the John le Carré of his generation’ by the crime writer Val McDermid, and in…
The monk’s tale
In an essay for Prospect a few years back the writer Leo Benedictus noticed how many contemporary novels used what…
The invisible man
Of the handful of things we can establish about Willis Wu, the protagonist of Charles Yu’s second novel, the most…
Portrait of the artist as a young woman
One of Barack Obama’s favourite books of 2020, Raven Leilani’s debut comes acclaimed by a literary Who’s Who that includes…
Life and death decisions
Thanks to the Booker Prize, Richard Flanagan is probably the only Tasmanian novelist British readers are likely to have heard…
House of horrors
If the last quarter of 2020 saw a glut of novels published, of which there were winners (Richard Osman) and…
